Collection: Art prints by Carl Blechen

Carl Blechen was a German painter of the early 19th century who is regarded as one of the most important and idiosyncratic landscape painters of German Romanticism. He received his artistic training at the Berlin Academy and initially oriented himself towards the Romantic landscape tradition, in particular Caspar David Friedrich. However, he received decisive impulses from his trip to Italy from 1828-1829, which permanently changed his style and made him a forerunner of German realism and even impressionism.

Blechen devoted himself primarily to forest landscapes, Italian landscapes and views of industrial plants. His pictures often show dramatic effects of light and shadow, dense vegetation and an unusual immediacy in the depiction of nature. His studies from Italy, in which he captured the light, warmth and atmosphere of the south with a loose hand and bold brushstrokes, and his depictions of the rolling mill in Eberswalde, which are among the earliest examples of industrial motifs in German painting, became particularly well known.

Stylistically, Blechen's works are characterized by a painterly freedom, often sketchy execution and an intense, sometimes dramatically exaggerated use of colour. He combined a romantic feeling for nature with a direct, almost modern gift for observation. The immediacy and gestural brushwork of his oil sketches and studies in particular are far ahead of late 19th century painting.

Although Carl Blechen was recognized during his lifetime and became a professor at the Berlin Academy, he suffered from severe mental illness in his later years, which forced him to give up his artistic activities and led to his early death. Today he is regarded as a key figure in German landscape painting between Romanticism and Realism, whose works are highly valued in museums and on the art market for their painterly boldness, atmospheric density and astonishing modernity.