Edvard Munch : Tortured Life In Brilliant Color

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" No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love. " Edvard Munch

Edvard's talent was evident by his early realist paintings, but the traumatic events that plagued Edvard's youth had an even deeper impact on his artistic vision than any other artist or artistic movement could have2. His mother, brother, and one of his sisters died of tuberculosis while he was still young, and Edvard was himself a sickly child.

In 1 885 , Munch received a grant to study for three weeks in Paris. A year later , he began working on "The Sick Child", which would be his first truly personal piece. Here was Munch exploring the darkness of his youth, in a painting based on memories of his favorite sister Sophie's affliction3 with tuberculosis. Munch es-chewed the naturalistic approach of Krogh, and incorporated expressionist tendencies in his work. Death, illness and mental anguish were themes that would from then on continue to figure" prominently in his paintings. Although "The Sick Child" wasn't initially appreciated by critics, it remains one ...
... of his most important works, along with "The Day After" and "Puberty" , two other paintings from the same period. Munch had spent considerable time discussing philosophical matters with Norway's Kristiania bohemians5 leader Hans Jaeger6 , and it was at that point that he had decided the impressions of his soul, and not his eyes, were what he wanted to commit to canvas7.

In 1889, at the age of 26, Edvard Munch put on his first retrospective exhibit at The Norwegian Students' Association in Kristiania. The show is a success, no doubt due to the fact that he chooses to present his lighter, less anguished creations8 , and he is awarded a travel grant which will allow him to return to Paris for the next three years, in order to further his studies. Munch's father dies, and he returns to Paris to study, this time with L6on Bonnat, but Munch gains far more artistic direction from his interest in the works of the post-impressionists. His following show, this time at the Artists' Association in Berlin. The show was both successful, and a disaster, as critics denounced his work as9 that of an anarchist10, and closed the exhibit. Nonetheless, Munch becomes a household name in Germany. Munch lived and worked in Berlin and Paris for many years, and his works were included in several exhibits.

In 1891 , Munch began working on sketches for The Scream, his most famous piece, and descriptive self-portrait. There were several versions of this work created by munch, from black and white illustrations to several paintings, u-sing several different techniques. In 1893, he presents some of the paintings from his Frieze of Life series in an exhibit on Unter den Linden, again, dark¬ness is ever present in his work, which is charged with atmosphere and anguished love. The next year, he continues working on the series, and works such as the Madonna and Ashes are born. In 1896, Munch begins experimenting with lithographs, and woodcuts, which he produces in collaboration with printer Auguste Clot.

In the early 1900s, Munch continued painting Frieze of Life images, but he felt it was time for him to move on to other things. In 1902, plagued by sadness over an ill-fated romance and the cumulative traumas of his life, not to mention a growing battle with alcoholism, Munch tries to commit suicide, but fails, wounding his hand instead. Munch exorcizes" his demons by making several paintings which feature representations of his love lost, and even creates works based on less introverted themes such as Bathing Men, but Munch's tormented psyche takes over once more, and in 1908, he is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he spends several months recovering from a nervous breakdown. In 1916, Munch purchases the Ekely estate, just outside of Kristiania, where he will remain for the rest of his life.

Munch may not be as visible as other European artists such as Salvador Dali12 or Pablo Picasso13, but that is mostly due to the fact that he willed14 his personal collection to the city of Oslo. Nevertheless, he remains one of the most groundbreaking artists to have risen at the turn of the twentieth century.