Munch, Edvard (ĕd`värt m

ngk), 1863–1944, Norwegian painter and graphic artist. He studied in Oslo and under Bonnat Bonnat, Léon Joseph Florentin , 1833–c.1922, French portrait and historical painter. He is best known for his portraits of famous men, including Thiers, Victor Hugo, and Dumas fils. Bonnat is represented in the Metropolitan Museum.
..... Click the link for more information. in Paris and traveled in Europe. He abandoned impressionism impressionism, in painting, late-19th-century French school that was generally characterized by the attempt to depict transitory visual impressions, often painted directly from nature, and by the use of pure, broken color to achieve brilliance and luminosity.
..... Click the link for more information. and in the 1890s, from a profound personal sense of isolation, visually examined such primal themes as birth, death, thwarted love, sex, fear, and anxiety. Stricken by tragedy (his mother and favorite sister died young, another sister was psychotic, and he feared for his own sanity), Munch transformed his own trauma into an exploration of universal themes, creating figurative images that are sometimes violent, sometimes tranquil and sorrowful. He also executed a masterful series of self-portraits. Munch's emotionally charged style is recognized as being of primary importance to the birth of German expressionism expressionism, term used to describe works of art and literature in which the representation of reality is distorted to communicate an inner vision. The expressionist transforms nature rather than imitates it.
..... Click the link for more information. . Also during the 1890s, Munch's most productive period, he made a number of powerful and often shocking woodcuts, developing a new technique of direct and forceful cutting that served to revive creative activity in this medium.

Among Munch's strongest and best-known works are The Scream (1893), Vampire (1894), and The Kiss (1895). Reaction to his stark and sometimes fearsome images caused the closing of his first major exhibition held in Berlin in 1892. In 1909, after a severe mental illness, he returned from Germany to Norway, where he painted murals for the Univ. of Oslo and for an Oslo chocolate factory. His painting became brighter of palette and less introverted until the 1920s, when he again was moved to portray his dreadful anguish. All but a few of Munch's paintings, e.g. Summer Night's Dream (The Voice) (1893, Boston Mus. of Fine Arts), are in Norwegian collections.

Bibliography

See Munch: In His Own Words (2001), ed. by P. E. Tojner; The Private Journals of Edvard Munch (2005), ed. by J. G. Holland; biographies by O. Benesch (tr. 1960) and S. Prideaux (2005); studies by A. Moen (3 vol., 1956–58), W. Timm (tr. 1969), J. P. Hodin (1972), T. M. Messer (1973), G. Woll (2001), and K. McShine, ed. (2006).

Munch, Edvard

Edvard Munch, self-portrait, lithograph, 1895; in the Albertina, Vienna

(credit: Courtesy of the Albertina, Vienna)

(born Dec. 12, 1863, Løten, Norway—died Jan. 23, 1944, Ekely) Norwegian painter and printmaker. His life and art were marked by the deaths of both parents, his brother, and his sister during his childhood, and the mental illness of another sister. He received little formal training, but the encouragement of a circle of artists in Christiania (now Oslo) and exposure to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism helped him develop a highly original style. It was principally through his work of the 1890s, a series of paintings on love and death in which he gave form to mysterious and dangerous psychic forces, that he made crucial contributions to modern art. The Scream (1893), his most famous work, is often seen as a symbol of modern humanity's spiritual anguish. His etchings, lithographs, drypoints, and woodcuts closely resemble his paintings in style and subject matter. After a nervous breakdown in 1908–09, therapy lent his work a more positive, extroverted tone, but his art never recovered its former intensity. His work influenced the proponents of German Expressionism.

Munch, Edvard

Born Dec. 12, 1863, in Löten; died Jan. 23, 1944, in Ekely, near Oslo. Norwegian painter and graphic artist.

Munch studied in Christiania at the Royal School of Art and Handicraft from 1881 to 1886 and at the studio of C. Krohg in 1882 and 1883. From the late 1880’s to 1908 he lived on the European continent. In France he was influenced by postimpressionism. He spent a great deal of time in Germany; he also lived for some time in Italy. Munch’s philosophy developed under the influence of H. H. Jaeger and such symbolist writers as J. A. Strindberg, as a result of which the artist became fascinated with the themes of slowly ebbing life, death, solitude, anxiety, and perverse eroticism.

Beginning in the 1890’s, Munch’s works showed the influence of art nouveau (The Artist’s Sister, 1892; The Dying Man’s Room, 1893). At the same time, a number of new devices that intensified the tragic impact of images and in many ways anticipated expressionism were revealed. These devices included the use of bold vortex-forming lines, intensely dynamic composition, and a dissonant palette (The Scream, 1893; The Dance of Life, 1899; Girls on the Bridge, c. 1901—all three works in the National Gallery, Oslo).

Most of Munch’s works of the 1890’s and the first decade of the 20th century are part of the symbolic cycle Frieze of Life,which the artist never completed. The artist also painted decorative murals (the wall painting in the auditorium of the University of Oslo, 1910—16) and produced a great many expressive portraits of his contemporaries. Munch also did a number of engravings, etchings, and lithographs.

REFERENCES

Stenersen, R. Edvard Munk. Epilogue by I. Ia. Tsagarelli. Moscow, 1972. (Translated from Norwegian.)
Benesch, O. E. Munch. Cologne, 1960.
Munchmuseet: Katalog. Oslo, 1963. Stang, N. Edvard Munch. Oslo [1971].
E. Munch (album). Text by T. M. Messer. New York, [1973].

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