Edvard Munch, Desire, Mortality, Isolation and Anxiety: Between the Clock and the Bed
Edvard Munch, 1925, The Dance of Life; courtesy the Munch Museum, Oslo
Seven works in the exhibition make their United States debut including Lady in Black (1891), Puberty (1894), Jealousy (1907), Death Struggle (1915), Man with Bronchitis (1920), Self-Portrait with Hands in Pockets (1925–26) and Ashes (1925). The exhibition will also include a presentation of Sick Mood at Sunset. Despair (1892), the earliest depiction and compositional genesis of The Scream, which is being shown outside Europe for only the second time in its history.
As a young man in the late 19th century, Edvard Munch’s (1863–1944) bohemian pictures placed him among the most celebrated and controversial artists of his generation. But as he confessed in 1939, his true "breakthrough came very late in life, really only starting when I was 50 years old."
One of Munch's last works, Self-Portrait, Between the Clock and the Bed <(1940–43) — with its themes of desire, mortality, and anxiety — serves as a touchstone and guide to the approximately 45 works in the exhibition. Together, these paintings propose an alternative view of Munch as an artist as revolutionary in the 20th century as he was when he made a name for himself in the Symbolist era.
Born and raised in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, Edvard Munch’s career spanned 60 years and included ties to the Symbolist and expressionist movements, as well as their legacies. Following a brief period of formal training in painting at the Royal School of Art and Design in Kristiania, Munch exhibited widely throughout Europe affecting the trajectory of modernism in France, Germany and his native Norway. While best known for the paintings and prints titled The Scream, Munch was a prolific creator who left a body of work that includes approximately 1,750 paintings, 18,000 prints and 4,500 watercolors as well as sculpture, graphic art, theater design and film.
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