Subversive Landscapes: The Symbolic Representation of Socialist Landscapes in the Visual Arts of the German Democratic Republic

Abstract

This essay on the visual representation of landscapes in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) suggests the historical and aesthetic significance of romantic traditions of the nineteenth century for the Socialist cultural practice of the GDR as well as for theoretical reflections on the importance of landscape and nature for the development of a Socialist society. With such a comparative approach, we can not only interpret philosophical work by Lothar Kühne as a Marxist reflection on romantic notions of the importance of landscape but we can also trace the stylistic influence of romantic artists like Caspar David Friedrich on the GDR’s Socialist landscape painting. More specifically, the essay shows how Wolfgang Mattheuer became the foremost GDR landscape painter by adapting, transforming, and reevaluating Friedrich’s art. Relying on the tradition of German romanticism, Mattheuer developed a new genre of Socialist landscape representation comprising both important artworks and tools of critique.