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The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch is regarded as a pioneer in the Expressionist movement in modern painting. At an early stage Munch was recognized in Germany and central Europe as one of the creators of a new epoch. His star is still on the ascendant in the other European countries, and in the rest of the world. Munch's art from the 1890s is the most well known, but his later work is steadily attracting greater attention, and it appears to inspire present-day artists in particular.
Edvard Munch grew up in Norway's capital, Oslo, then called Christiania. His father, Christian Munch - brother of the well-known historian P.A. Munch - was a deeply religious military doctor earning a modest income. His wife, who was 20 years his junior, died of tuberculosis when Edvard was only five years old, and Edvard's older sister, Sophie, died of the disease at the age of 15. Edvard himself was often ill. A younger sister was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age. Of the five siblings only one, Andreas, ever married, only to die a few months after the wedding.
His childhood home was culturally stimulating, but in his art Munch turned again and again to the memory of illness, death and grief. After a year at Technical School, Munch became dedicated to art. He studied the old masters, attended courses in the painting of nudes at the Royal School of Drawing and was instructed for a time by Norway's leading artist, Christian Krohg. His early works were influenced by French-inspired Realism, and his great talent was soon discovered.
In 1885 Munch went on a short study tour to Paris. That year he started on the work that was to be his breakthrough, "The Sick Child", in which he makes a radical break with the realistic approach seen in a similar motif by Christian Krohg. Munch's picture was about his sister Sophie. He struggled with the motif a long time, searching for "the first impression" and a valid painterly expression for a painful, personal experience. He had renounced perspective and plastic form, and had attained a composition formula reminiscent of icons. The course texture of the surface displayed all the signs of a laborious creative process. The criticism was very negative.
His main works from subsequent years are less provocative in their form. "Inger on the Beach" from 1889 shows Munch's ability to portray a lyrical atmosphere, in keeping with the new romantic trend of that time. The picture is painted in Åsgårdstrand, a small coastal town near Horten. It is this region's characteristic coastline we find used as a meaningful "leitmotif" in so many of Munch's compositions.
In 1889 he painted a portrait of the leader of the Kristiania (as Christiania was now spelled) bohemians, Hans Jæger. Munch's association with Jæger and his circle of radical anarchists became a crucial turning point in his life and a source of new inner unrest and conflict. At that time Munch commenced an extensive biographical literary production which he resumed at different periods in his life. These early writings serve as a reference for several of the central motifs of the 'nineties. In keeping with Jæger's ideas he wanted to present truthful close-ups of the modern individual's longings and agonies - he wanted to paint his own life. Read More
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Edvard Munch, Impressionism, Edvard Munch Biography, Munch Paintings, Munch Drawings, The Scream, Ash 1894, Bathing Man, Mermaid on the Shore, The Murderer, Separation, The Dance of Life, Madeban Auf Dem Pier, Jealousy, Young Girl on a Jetty, The Girls on the Pier, Four Girls on a Bridge, The Kiss, Girl with Red Hair, Lady From the Sea, Madonna 1895, Portrait of Madame Cézanne, Summer Night at the Beach, Girl on a Bridge, Summer Night at Asgarstrand, Vampire, White and Red, Madonna 1894, Bathing Man, The Sun, Moonlight
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