Berlin | ArtRegion: Berlin, Mitte

Kuckei + Kuckei

Gerhard Winkler: Amerikanische Nächte / Nachtstücke 2017 – 2021

14. September – 23. Oktober 2021

The concept of Nachtstücke (nocturnes) has its culturo-historical counterpart in music, painting and literature. In literature, it tends to describe eerie and gloomy characters (as found in the works of E.T.A. Hoffmann and other representatives of “Black Romanticism”); in the domain of music, however, it primarily appears in the form of nocturnes (Nottornos) and, above all, in “melancholic piano pieces”, such as those of Frèderic Chopin and John Field.

In the domain of painting, the notion of Nachtstücke, which enjoyed immense popularity between the 15th and 17th centuries (Rembrandt and Bosch) in the epoch of the Romantics, experienced a renaissance that was associated with a new orientation and ideas charged with content. From this time on, the artists (one naturally thinks of Caspar David Friedrich and his school) now created nocturnal landscapes, which often involved mysterious illuminations that could be interpreted as existential “soul landscapes”.