Edvard Munch (/mʉŋk/, b. 12 December 1863, Ådalsbruk, Hedmark, Norway - d. 23 January 1944, Ekely(d), Oslo(d), Norway) was a Norwegian painter, one of the pioneers of modern art, considered a forerunner of Expressionism, and a representative of the European rather than the Norwegian artistic tradition.
He was by nature a loner, but paradoxically he was very interested in human relationships, which would be the essence of his work.
Edvard Munch's Biographical data
Edvard Munch was born on 12 December 1863 in Løten, in the Norwegian county of Hedmark. In 1881 he entered the Royal School of Drawing in Christiania (now Oslo) and trained under the sculptor Julius Middelthun. In 1882 he attended Christian Krohg's studio and the open-air classes led by Fritz Thaulow.
Thaulow, appreciating Munch's talent, decides to finance a trip to Antwerp and Paris. In 1885 he travelled to Paris, where he stayed for four weeks, and made contact with Parisian artistic circles, being amazed by the Impressionist painters. In 1889 he held his first personal exhibition in Christiania and in 1892 he took part in the exhibition of the Berlin Artists' Association.
In Berlin he produced his first etchings and lithographs. During his next trip to Paris (1896) he exhibited his work at the Salon des Artistes Independents and the Bing Gallery. Munch moves away from the Impressionist artistic language, being more interested in decorative values and the expressiveness of lines.
At the Berlin Secession Exhibition (1902) he exhibits 22 paintings from the cycle Friezes of Life. In Berlin, he takes his first steps in the field of graphic art, mainly producing etchings and lithographs. In the autumn of 1908 he is admitted to a clinic in Copenhagen because of severe emotional depression. In 1910 he begins work on the decoration of the University of Christiania.
For seven years he paints 11 monumental canvases illustrating eternal, life-giving forces: Sun History, Alma Mater (University, symbol of Science). Meanwhile - after 1933 - in Germany, the Nazi authorities consider his works 'degenerate' and they are withdrawn from German museums.
During the occupation of Norway, Munch lives in seclusion on his Ekely estate in Oslo, where he dies on 23 January 1944, a month after his 80th birthday.
Edvard Munch's work
Munch's artistic education in Norway was in the naturalist tradition. Later, as he came into contact with European art, especially French and German, he developed his own distinctive style. Both his paintings and graphic works are characterised by a daring innovation in the means of production and an abstract expressiveness of form.
In painting The Scream, Edvard Munch enters the world of fear and loneliness. A man screams in the foreground, his body convulsively contorted and the gesture of his hands clasping his head betrays a boundless fear. The yellowish face harmonizes with the cadaverous skull.
The colours of the environment symbolise the character's state of mind; the dark blue holds back the heartrending voice and echoes it in a wide bay, under the bright, blood-red sky. Apart from the painting reproduced here, which is the best known and was in the National Gallery in Oslo, from where it was stolen, there are fifty other different versions of the Scream.
The stolen original was found in 2006. The fourth version of the painting is the painting that fetched the highest price in the world, going for $119,922,500 at auction on 2 May 2012).
Munch's ambivalent attitude towards women is reflected in many of his paintings. He sees them either as unblemished virgins and the embodiment of love (Morning 1884, Angel in Black 1884, Puberty 1894) or as symbols of sin and instruments of Satan (The Vampire 1893, The Day After 1895). From this point of view, Madonna represents a perfect synthesis of his perverse mystical and erotic obsessions.
Presenting Madonna at the Salon des Artistes Independents in Paris in 1896, Munch gives her the title Woman in Love, proving that in his eyes religion and sensuality are closely linked. In Munch's vision, the woman in love is confused with the Madonna of suffering. The woman with bare breasts and unfurled hair, with her head hanging back, is at the height of ecstasy of love.
The Dance of Life, the largest painting in the cycle Friezes of Life, illustrates the artist's memories, desires, disappointments and experiences. Munch transforms a pleasurable pastime like dancing into a ballet of knots.
Edvard Munch's legacy
Munch's skill in revealing the hidden secrets of his themes will be an example for many other artists to follow.
The echoes of his inspirations can be seen not only in the works of the German Expressionists, but also in the work of two Austrian painters, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. Munch's painting is also carefully studied by Lucian Freud, who continued the German tradition of Neorealism (Neue Sachlichkeit) at the beginning of his artistic activity.
Like Munch, Lucian Freud, using the linearity of drawing, manages to reproduce his own moods on canvas.