Academy Travel Lecture Program

Art in Germany from 1800 to 1914 developed within a landscape shaped by political fragmentation, industrial expansion, and accelerating social change. 

The early nineteenth century saw the emergence of Romanticism, most powerfully expressed in the work of Caspar David Friedrich, whose contemplative landscapes conveyed spiritual longing, nationalism, and a search for meaning in nature. This gave way to the Biedermeier period, characterised by intimacy, restraint, and a focus on domestic life, reflecting the values and anxieties of a cautious bourgeois society.

As the century progressed, German art diversified, embracing styles such as realism, historicism, symbolism, and Jugendstil, while major architectural developments occurred in Berlin and Munich. These cities introduced new urban designs and cultural institutions that transformed artistic practices. In the years before World War I, these related styles exhibited growing restlessness and experimentation, foreshadowing the significant break from tradition that was imminent.

In this lecture, Christopher traces these developments, showing how nineteenth-century artistic tensions ultimately gave rise to expressionism in the work of Kandinsky and Franz Marc.