“Land in Sicht – 400 Years of Landscape Art” opens March 14, 2015, at the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art (pictured), Teerhof 20, Bremen, Germany.

Featuring pictures drawn from four centuries, the exhibition aims to shed new light on the artistic representation of landscape. The exhibition deliberately avoids showing the pictures in chronological order, even though the 150-plus works on display would easily lend themselves to such an approach.

Instead the pictures are arranged in thematic juxtaposition or in surprising new contexts. Landscapes are not innocent portrayals. In recent years, discussion of environmental issues has highlighted how deceptive the idea of idyllic landscapes can be.

Even as refuges from political or social ills, landscapes are problematic, say the curators, and not just in our own times. An idyllic landscape by David Teniers the Younger features a huge gallows, thereby hinting at the sense of foreboding in even the most inviting natural scene.

This is a central theme of contemporary landscape art, seen here not just with Anselm Kiefer but in the video art of Ingeborg Lüscher and the photography of Stan Douglas. Even in the landscapes of Gerhard Richter, which may at first glance suggest a traditionally Romantic approach, one constantly finds fissure and disruption indicating a loss of natural purity.

The exhibition runs through September 27, 2015.

For more information, contact Bremen Tourist-Central.

(Photo courtesy of Weserburg Museum of Modern Art)