The Romantic Vision of Caspar David Friedrich: Paintings and Drawings from the U.S.S.R.

Essays by Robert Rosenblum and Boris I. Asvarishch pls check spelling. aa/spelling is fine/pk , edited by Sabine Rewald. Metropolitan Museum of Art and Art Institute of Chicago (Abrams, dist.), $22.50 ISBN 0-8109-6402-3 Published in conjunction with the first U.S. exhibition devoted to Friedrich's pk oeuvre, this lovely, compact volume chronicles the German Romantic painter's quiet, contemplative existence, and it includes a catalogue of the 20 works in the show. All but one belonged to Russia's imperial family and eventually were acquired by the Hermitage and Pushkin museums. Friedrich was primarily a landscape painter who, in his own words, ``aspired to noble truth in his communication of unattainable nature.'' A characteristic Friedrich painting places one or more spectators in the midst of a natural scene ( Moonrise by the Sea, for example), the beauty of the ocean or mountains signifying a transcendent reality in all its mysterious, mystical splendor. Probably the most affecting is On the Sailboat, in which a couple, possibly the painter and his wife, gaze upon the majesty of an approaching city, perhaps representing the setting of their sacred life together through eternity. Rosenblum is co-author of Nineteenth-Century Art; Asvarishch is curator of European paintings at the Hermitage;this should be semicolon/pk and Rewald is associate curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Apr.)