In Dossena, home to the oldest mining complex in the Brembana Valley, Julius von Bismarck presents his fifth landscape painting—a work that exists both within and as part of the landscape, dissolving the boundary between subject and surface. Inspired by the aesthetics of historical engravings and mine studies from artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Caspar David Friedrich, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Klee, von Bismarck draws particularly on 18th- and 19th-century Italian landscape views, woodcuts, and copper engravings that aimed for realism. His approach subverts this tradition: he flattens the three-dimensionality of the quarry into a two-dimensional image, creating a “reversed” trompe-l’œil.

Caption: © the artist, work in progress / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025