Born: December 12, 1863 - Loten, Norway
Died: January 23, 1944 - Oslo, Norway
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"I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart."
Summary of Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch was a prolific yet perpetually troubled artist preoccupied with matters of human mortality such as chronic illness, sexual liberation, and religious aspiration. He expressed these obsessions through works of intense color, semi-abstraction, and mysterious subject matter. Following the great triumph of French Impressionism, Munch took up the more graphic, symbolist sensibility of the influential Paul Gauguin, and in turn became one of the most controversial and eventually renowned artists among a new generation of continental Expressionist and Symbolist painters. Munch came of age in the first decade of the 20th century, during the peak of the Art Nouveau movement and its characteristic focus on all things organic, evolutionary and mysteriously instinctual. In keeping with these motifs, but moving decidedly away from their decorative applications, Munch came to treat the visible as though it were a window into a not fully formed, if not fundamentally disturbing, human psychology.
Key Ideas
Edvard Munch was born in 1863 in a rustic farmhouse in the village of Adalsbruk, located in Loten, Norway. His father, Christian Munch, was a practicing physician, married to Laura Catherine Bjolstad. The family, including sisters Johanne Sophie, Laura Catherine Inger Marie, and brother Peter, relocated to Oslo in 1864, following Christian's appointment as medical officer at Akershus Fortress, a military area which at the time was in use as a prison. Munch's mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, the same year Inger Marie was born. Within a decade, Munch's favorite sister, Sophie, just one year his senior and a gifted young artist, also died of tuberculosis. Munch's father, a fundamentalist Christian, thereafter experienced fits of depression and anger as well as quasi-spiritual visions in which he interpreted the family's illnesses as punishment of divine origin.
Important Art by Edvard Munch | |
  | The Sick Child (1885-86, 1907)Artwork description & Analysis: The Sick Child is one of Munch's earliest works, considered by the artist "a breakthrough" for setting the tone for his early career in which death, loss, anxiety, madness, and the preoccupations of a troubled soul were his chief subject matter. Devoted to his deceased sister, Johanne Sophie, the painting depicts the bedridden fifteen-year-old with a grieving woman beside her, the latter probably a representation of Munch's mother who had preceded Sophie in death, also from tuberculosis, eleven years prior. The rough brushstrokes, scratched surface and melancholic tones of this painting all reveal a highly personal memorial. The work was highly criticized for its "unfinished appearance" when first exhibited, but nonetheless championed by Munch's spiritual mentor, Hans Jæger, as a masterful achievement. Oil on canvas - Tate Gallery, London |
 | Night in St. Cloud (1890)Artwork description & Analysis: If the Sick Child is a loving tribute to Munch's favorite sister, Johanne Sophie, Night in St. Cloud is a far more complex and darker memorial to the artist's father who had died the previous year. Created not long after Munch's arrival in Paris, Night in St. Cloud reveals the immediate influence of Post-Impressionists Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, whose many portraits of solitary figures or empty rooms inform this canvas. Munch's tribute to his father is composed of a darkened, seemingly hallowed room bathed in crepuscular light, indeed a space occupied only by shadows and stillness. The rendition is befitting of their tense relationship. In other paintings that focus on death, Munch made the subject physically present; however, in this instance, Munch's father's passing evokes only a sense of cool abandon. Notably, this work presages Pablo Picasso's Blue period. Oil on canvas - The National Gallery, Oslo |
 | The Scream (1893)Artwork description & Analysis: The significance of Munch's The Scream within the annals of modern art cannot be overstated. It stands among an exclusive group, including Van Gogh's Starry Night, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and Matisse's Red Studio, comprising the quintessential works of modernist experiment and lasting innovation. The fluidity of Munch's lateral and vertical brushwork echoes the sky and clouds in Starry Night, yet one may also find the aesthetic elements of Fauvism, Expressionism, and perhaps even Surrealism arising from this same surface. Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard - The National Gallery, Oslo |
More Edvard Munch Artwork and Analysis:
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Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Justin Wolf
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 01 Jun 2011. Updated and modified regularly. 
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