Dark Romanticism

The spectacular fall exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main

The dark side of human existence in European art, between Romanticism and Surrealism

Since the late eighteenth century, numerous artists have been enthusiastic about the sublimity of nature, the purity of emotion, melancholy, and loneliness while at the same time feeling drawn to the abysses of the human condition, as is manifested in times of war and economic crisis. Their works tell of passion and death; their themes deal with the mysterious, the uncanny, the irrational, the fantastic, the grotesque, and evil. They feature social outcasts: madmen, criminals, beggars. In 1930 the literary theorist Mario Praz coined a term for this, “Dark Romanticism,” but it has yet to have been thoroughly examined by art theory. This publication is the first to investigate in detail the relations among the Romantic, Symbolist, and Surrealist movements, presenting Romanticism as a recurring sentiment that was embraced throughout Europe and endured into the twentieth century.