by the most famous work E. Munch is the painting "The Scream". The artist himself created four versions of this painting, performing them in various techniques.
The Munch Museum has one of two oil paintings, while the Scream, sold at Sotheby's in New York, is in pastel.
E. Munch "Scream"
E. Munch "Scream"
The artist's own explanation of the concept of his painting is widely known: “I was walking along the road with friends. The sun was setting. The sky turned blood red. I was seized with sadness. I stood mortally tired against the background of dark blue. The fjord and the city hung in fiery flames. I got separated from my friends. Trembling with fear, I heard the cry of nature.
The painting depicts a blood-red sky, a shapeless generalized landscape and, against its background, a human figure screaming in despair. The piercing sound of color gives rise to a feeling of excruciating anxiety, and the world appears to the artist as bleak, soulless and depressing. In 1895, Munch created a lithograph on the same subject.
The picture is credited with a mystical meaning, a prophetic meaning (anticipation of the tragic events of the 20th century: two world wars, ecological disasters and nuclear weapons), and some believe that these paintings (variants of the painting "The Scream") are cursed: people who somehow came into contact with the canvas fell ill, fell into severe depression, or died suddenly. All this created a bad reputation for the picture, but, on the other hand, attracted special interest to it.
It is known that the artist suffered from manic-depressive psychosis, therefore, perhaps, in his work there are motifs of death, fear, loneliness. In addition, these motifs were characteristic of expressionism - a trend in European art era of modernism, one of the first representatives of which was E. Munch. Expressionism seeks not only to reproduce reality, but more to express the emotional state of the author.
But some researchers do not see much mysticism in the picture, explaining the plot of the picture as a natural phenomenon: in 1883, the Krakatau volcano in Indonesia erupted, and a significant amount of volcanic ash remained in the atmosphere at altitudes up to 80 km for several years and caused intense coloring of dawns. Clouds of ash could appear for a long time in various places and color the sky in different regions of Europe. Astronomer D. Olsen from Texas even identified a place in Oslo where exactly such a sky could be seen, as described by Munch.
In this regard, the figure in the foreground of the picture could depict the artist himself, protecting himself from the cry of nature. The pose of the person depicted on the canvas can be called a reflex reaction of someone trying to escape from a strong influence from outside.
But the picture "Scream", being the most famous painting artist, still cannot exhaustively characterize the work of E. Munch. To do this, we should turn to his other paintings, as well as to his biography.
Biography and work of the artist
Edvard Munch. Photo
Edvard Munch(1863-1944) - Norwegian painter and graphic artist, theater artist, art theorist. He was born in the family of the doctor Christian Munch and was the second child (of five children).
IN early childhood he lost his mother, who died of tuberculosis, and a few years later from the same disease, his sister.
E. Munch graduated State Academy Arts and Crafts in Oslo, where he studied painting and sculpture.
After graduating from the academy (1886), he went to Paris, where he became acquainted with the work of the Impressionists, which had a strong influence on his work, as well as symbolism. In the same year, he creates his first known painting "Sick Girl".
"Sick Girl" (1886)
E. Munch "Sick Girl"
Canvas, oil. 119.5x118.5 cm. National Gallery, Oslo
The painting is based on the artist's memories of the illness and death of his older sister Sophie Munch, who was only 15 years old. The girl is sitting in bed, leaning on a pillow. Her pale face seems to radiate light, it stands out as a bright spot in the twilight of the room. For this picture, 11-year-old girl Betsy Nielsen posed.
Sitting next to the dying girl, her head bowed in despair, the woman is Sophie and Edward's aunt Karen Bjölstad. After the death of Sophie's and Edvard's (Laura's) mother, she took over the care of the housekeeping in the Munk house.
The painting was first exhibited at the Autumn art exhibition 1886 and was received negatively by critics. The work was declared an unfinished sketch, considered shapeless, careless, imperfect and not worthy of an exhibition. Although there were more benevolent reviews: in the picture they noted its originality and touchingness. After the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, a version of the painting from the Dresden Gallery was auctioned off as an example of "degenerate art."
But Munch himself considered this work very important for himself and subsequently called it "his breakthrough." He creates several versions of this picture.
In 1889, he created another picture-remembrance of his sister's illness - "Spring", in which there is no sense of tragedy, and the title of the picture is also optimistic.
E. Munch "Spring"
In the center of the canvas, in a high-backed chair, there is a sick girl with a tired, pale face and thin arms that rest limply on her lap. Next to her is a mother or a nurse. The open window is lined with flowers, a fresh breeze bursts into it. A ray of the spring sun illuminates the faces of those sitting in the room, but it attracts the gaze of only the living - the woman; the dying girl, on the contrary, turns away from him, because. this ray too "loudly" says that her life is nearing completion.
The picture is a contrast of tragedy and optimism, and all this is life in its contradiction and at the same time in harmony: extinction and rebirth are merged into one.
Already in early work Munch, the theme of man and nature appears. In fact, almost all of his paintings of the 80s. are landscape. Moreover, some landscape paintings are clearly written under the influence of the Impressionists. For example, the painting "View of the river in Saint-Cloud" (1890).
E. Munch "View of the river in Saint Cloud"
But in landscape paintings one can see the artist's desire for generalization, because. most often on these canvases there is a person. Nature for Munch is interesting not in itself, but as a special world that lives according to its own laws, but in which human life takes place.
But the artist also has purely landscape canvases, and most often they depict the harsh nature of Scandinavia.
E Munch "Coastal Winter Landscape" (1915)
E Munch "Spring landscape with a red house (Ekelu)" (1935-1940)
"Metabolism" (1899)
Canvas from the cycle "Frieze of Life". The painting depicts a man and a woman against the backdrop of a landscape. The skull of the animal sprouts wildly with foliage, the body buried in the ground, like tentacles, is embraced by the roots of the tree. Life conquers death. The picture is a symbol of the eternal rebirth of life.
E. Munch "Metabolism"
In the early 1890s, Munch left for Germany. There he became friends with Polish writer Stanislav Pshibyshevsky and his Norwegian wife Dagny Pshibyshevsky. She posed for him for many famous paintings: "Madonna", "Vampire", "Jealousy", "Kiss".
"Madonna" (1894)
E. Munch "Madonna"
Canvas, oil. Munch Museum, Oslo
The first version of the painting was created in 1893-1894, in 1895 a lithograph was made, and in total Munch created five versions of the painting. Madonna is depicted as a young naked woman with half-closed eyes and flowing black hair. Of course, this is not at all a canonical image of the Madonna, but the artist emphasizes her holiness with a halo around her head. Christians hardly agree with this interpretation. The lithograph differs in some details from the oil version. Different versions of the Madonna are currently in the Munch Museum and in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, as well as in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. Two more versions belong to private collectors.
Portrait Gallery of E. Munch
After 1900, the portrait became one of the leading genres in the artist's work. Munch had the gift of a psychologist, so he almost never painted portraits strangers- for him it was not the main thing to convey the external resemblance. Through the portrait, he always explored the human soul. Munch's portraits are always strict and even ascetic, and sometimes lyrical. They lack a detailed description and secondary details. The main attention in the portraits he created is focused on the face and psychological characteristics. His portraits perfectly reflected the character of a person. Munch's motto: "I write with my brain." He spent several weeks watching the customer, then to paint a portrait in just a few hours.
E. Munch "Portrait of Professor Daniel Jacobson"
One of best portraits Munch's brush is a portrait of Professor Daniel Jacobson, who treated the artist in a psychiatric clinic. The portrait was created in 1909.
The figure of D. Jacobson is depicted against a background of yellow and red tones. The pose is very expressive, it is full of expression and confidence, at the same time the professor's face expresses kindness and compassion.
E. Munch "Ibsen in the cafe of the Grand Hotel in Christiania"
Ibsen's work was close to Munch. The artist depicted Ibsen already very ill (he died of a stroke), sitting by the window. It is known that the paralyzed writer was seated by the window so that it seemed that he was working. The inner strength of Ibsen, Norwegian playwright, founder of the European " new drama”, a poet and publicist - the main idea of the portrait.
The artist has many self-portraits, which he painted at the turning points of his life.
E. Munch "Self-portrait with a bottle of wine". 1906. Munch Museum, Oslo
Symbolic paintings by E. Munch
The symbolism is especially pronounced in the cycle of works "The Frieze of Life" - a kind of poem about life, love and death. The symbolic and monumental images of the "Frieze of Life" comprehend the life of a person as a drama of his soul. It was during this period that Munch's pictorial and graphic works reach high excellence. The images are full of drama and anxiety, sometimes marked by the stamp of the grotesque, but they all contain reflections on the fate of man, the meaning of being.
E. Munch "Jealousy"
For example, the painting "Jealousy". The artist depicts the recognizable face of his friend Stanislav Pshibyshevsky, but this picture is a symbol of an all-consuming passion - jealousy. Jealousy destroys a person from the inside, incinerates him and makes him capable of any crime.
The painting "Metabolism" is also a symbol of the eternal rebirth of life.
E Munch "Four Ages in Life"
The painting "Four Ages in Life" (1902) symbolizes the stages life path any person. The situation depicted on the canvas is clearly artificial, but it is not perceived as such precisely because of the truth of life. And this vital truth is depicted on an alarming, bright red background.
The symbol of youth and purity is the painting “Young Woman on the Shore” (1896).
E. Munch "Young woman on the shore"
Real fame and recognition came to Munch in recent decades life. In the largest cities of Europe, his personal exhibitions were held, in 1933 he became a holder of the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Olaf. This state award Norway, and it is awarded for special merits to military and civil ranks, citizens of Norway, as well as to foreign monarchs and heads of state.
Munch was not only a painter, but also a muralist. In 1910-1916. he completed a large cycle of paintings in the hall of the university in Oslo. The themes of the murals were suggested to him by the philosophical works of Nietzsche.
E. Munch. last photo
Munch worked in the technique of woodcut, etching, black and color lithography. Many of his paintings were translated by him into etching and lithography, which he mastered to perfection. One of the most important types his work was engraving. Working in the technique of etching, drypoint, aquatint, lithography, woodcuts, the artist did not look for new themes and compositions, but only varied the motives of his paintings. In this case, his paintings can be regarded as a preliminary stage of work, and a graphic print as the final one.
The picture was separated from the engraving by at least a year, and sometimes ten or fifteen years. This gave the artist the opportunity to look at what was created from the outside, and then, discarding the superfluous and particular, to concentrate on the expression of the main idea.
When Nazi Germany occupied Norway, the artist rejected all attempts by the Germans to attract him to cooperation. He did not want to join the quisling council for the arts and refused to officially celebrate his eightieth birthday.
The creative heritage of Edvard Munch, the famous Norwegian painter, graphic artist, theater artist and art theorist, has about 1,000 paintings, 4,400 watercolors and drawings, more than 15,000 prints, and six sculptures.
E. Munch Museum
In 1963, the E. Munch Museum was solemnly opened in Oslo, which collects, processes and popularizes the work of the Norwegian artist and graphic artist.
At present, the museum fund consists of about 1100 paintings, 4500 drawings, 18000 graphic files. In addition to the artist's works, the museum contains several of his personal items, including those that he bequeathed to the city after his death.
Born (1863-1944) in Lathen (Norwegian province of Hedmark), in the family of a doctor. Soon the family moved to the capital. In 1879, at the request of his father, Munch entered the Higher Technical School. But, realizing his artistic vocation, he dropped out of school and began to study the basics of artistic literacy from famous sculptor Julius Middelthun. But a year later he left the Middeltun school and in 1882 began to visit, among other young artists, the studio of Christian Krogh. Krogh was the head of the group, later became director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo and chairman of the Union of Norwegian Artists. Munch studied hard. In 1884 he studied at Modum with Frits Thaulov, a landscape painter, one of the most interesting Impressionist painters in Norway, who gave painting lessons in the open air. Both Krogh and Thaulov taught Munch not only craftsmanship. It was here that the passion for landscape began - the most common genre of national painting. Among the major Norwegian artists - Munch's older contemporaries - were Eric Verenscholl, Gerhard Munte, Hans Heyerdahl. Their names, to which Munch's teachers should be included, are associated with the rise of Norwegian fine art in the last third of the 19th century. As representatives of a new generation, they sought to overcome the influences that had previously been brought to the national soil from art centers Germany - Düsseldorf and Munich. In the 80s. the orientation of Norwegian art is changing. Now Paris becomes the center of attraction, the work of Norwegian masters develops under the influence of other impulses, freeing itself from the conventions and canons that bind it. Such was the ideological and artistic situation that predetermined the beginning of Munch's path. At the same time, the artist's worldview was not formed in isolation from the entire social situation that took shape in Norway under the influence of the process of intensive development of capitalism and the growth of the labor movement. At the first stage of his development, Munch's worldview was greatly influenced by communication with the famous Norwegian writer Hans Jaeger, the leader of the Bohemian Movement circle. Munch did not share all the ideas of this circle, which professed extreme individualism. However, in the first years of his youth, Munch had a number of canvases ("The Next Day", "The Transitional Age" and others), which aroused the indignation of bourgeois criticism with the immorality of the topic.
The year 1889 turned out to be important for Munch. This year his first solo exhibition took place in Christiania (Oslo). Early work the masters were painted mainly in line with the creative interests of national art, they are close to the painting of his teachers and other Norwegian landscape and portrait painters. These were the artist's first experiments. The formation of Munch's creative individuality took place in contacts with other leading European schools and artistic movements of the era. A certain role in this was played by his acquaintance with the new french art. Already in the mid-80s. 19th century Munch made his first trip to France, and from 1889 to 1892 he lived mainly in this country. In Paris, Munch visited the studio of Leon Bonn, where the artist's passion for impressionistic painting began. The artist's acquisition of his own style took place not without the influence of Paul Gauguin's painting, in which he perceived the unusual color, decorative coloring and the world of Gauguin's poetic symbols. The theme of man and nature appears in Munch's early work. In essence, his paintings of the 80s. are landscape. They already outline the artist's desire for generalization, of course, not yet brought to the level of a symbol: the specific motif captured by him acquires significance, intense lyricism. The main thing is the transfer of the state, psychology, and not the event. Moreover, the emotional accent brings the image of a person, determining the mood of the landscape. Nature for Munch is a special world that lives according to its own laws, that spiritualized environment in which human life takes place. All these trends will continue later, already in pure landscapes.
In 1889, Munch painted the painting "Spring". Nothing here distracts attention from the main thing. In the center of the composition, in a chair with a high back, there is a sick girl, weak, with a tired, pale face and thin, weak hands. Next to her is her mother. A fresh breeze rushes in through the open, lined with flowers window. A ray of spring sun pierces the room, throwing bright highlights on objects, on faces full of suffering and sadness. The emotional expressiveness of the picture is based on the contrast of two intonations - optimistic and tragic, the artist shows the slow fading of life in spite of the joyful revival of nature.
Spring (1889)
Images of the sick and dying appeared more than once on the canvases of the early Munch. Undoubtedly, they not only reflected internal state artist, but were also inspired by the bleak events of his childhood: Munch lost his mother at the age of five, a few years later his older sister Sophie and brother Andreas died. A whole suite of canvases and engravings “The Sick Girl” is devoted to the theme of the slow fading of life, in which a specific plot, as it were, becomes the embodiment of various mental states: enlightenment, sadness, pain, hopelessness. The gradual development of the theme, the search for its various solutions, variations of the same motive are an integral part of creative method artist. Hence the numerous repetitions of one plot, the cyclical nature of the master's work. Munch creates works of great truth and humanity, expressing his tragic sense of life. From 1886 to 1936, the artist repeated The Sick Girl eight times.
Sick Girl (1896)
A special place in the work of Munch is occupied by the 90s. It was during this decade that he creates works in which the theme of suffering, loneliness acquires a markedly gloomy color. Joyless, deaf to someone else's misfortune, the world appears to the artist, which he embodies in a string of symbolic images. Munch's plastic language acquires extreme tension. Great importance the artist gives the rhythmic structure of the engraving or painting: the sharp sound of lines, silhouettes, spots. The formal techniques that Munch uses stem from the peculiarities of his worldview, emphatically tragic and emotionally naked. A special expression of the image gives a heightened emotional sound of color. In the lithograph “Death in the Sick Room”, real objects, the figures of people turn into contrasting spots of black and white, the space of the room is barely indicated by the distribution of sharp silhouettes of frozen figures, faces are likened to mournful masks symbolizing human grief. Munch takes the depicted scene beyond the scope of a private event. Completely disappears individual characteristic characters. The sorrow that is felt in the figures and faces here becomes a symbol of hopeless tragedy. In addition to this lithography, there are a number of other works - pictorial and graphic versions of the same theme, in which changes in artistic techniques can be traced.
Death in the Sick Room (1896)
The tense dynamics of space, resolved by sharp contrasts of plans, the meandering lines of the fjord and the sky, unusual colors the entire landscape, blazing red in the 1894 painting "Fear", testify to Munch's new creative principles. Several variants of this composition show the development of the artist's concept. From painting to painting, he enhances the expression of painting, where color becomes the main means of dramatizing the image. Its heightened activity, conventionality, fantasticness transform everyday reality, give it a metaphorical, symbolic meaning plot. In the painting “Fear”, the piercing sound of color gives rise to a feeling of excruciating anxiety. Like ghosts, walking townspeople move towards the viewer. It is difficult to distinguish their figures, closed in a single mass-crowd, it is difficult to distinguish faces that have turned into frozen masks hiding fear. Deprived of individuality, faceless images of people - a kind of grotesque, which the artist resorts to. Exaggeration essentially transforms the real appearance of people to the degree of bizarre, unreal, endowing them with gloomy symbolism. The world appears to the artist as joyless, soulless and depressing.
Fear (1894)
During these years, in the paintings and graphic works of Munch, in the system of his artistic thinking, features of symbolism are revealed. A new figurative reflection of reality in the field of plastic arts is realized in conditional forms that transform reality, mainly in the form of the pictorial system of modernity. In Munch's work, one can find many characteristic themes and plots of modernity, which acquire a bright originality from him. It should be emphasized at the same time that they were due to both the real circumstances of life and the artist's attitude. He chooses the most acute manifestations of life and human passions: in the engraving "Lonely" the theme of the relationship between a man and a woman is embodied, where anxious expectation lurks in frozen figures; a feeling that torments a person becomes the content of the lithograph “Jealousy”; the thirst for unity, overcoming the painful alienation and fear of loneliness, sounds in the engraving "The Kiss".
Lonely (Two) (1899)
Jealousy (1896)
Kiss (1897-1898)
Particularly striking expression figurative system symbolism found in a cycle of works under common name Frieze of Life is a kind of poem about life, love and death. In the symbolic and monumental images of the Frieze of Life, the initial and final phases of the life cycle are traced, a person's life is comprehended as a drama of his soul. It is during this period that the time of maturity comes, the talent of the artist is fully revealed. His paintings and graphic works reach high perfection. Plastic language acquires exceptional power. Images full of drama and anxiety, sometimes marked with the stamp of the grotesque, but based on life experiences, carry reflections on the fate of man, the meaning of being.
Ashes (Ashes) (1894)
Woman and Man (1896)
Man and Woman (1905)
Man and woman (1912-1915)
In 1893, Munch painted the painting "The Scream", which was then repeated in several versions in painting and graphics, and which determined the nature of the artist's creative development in the 90s. nineteenth century A lonely human figure seems to be lost in a vast oppressive world. The outlines of the fjord are only outlined by sinuous lines - piercing stripes of yellow, red and blue. The diagonal of the bridge and the zigzags of the landscape create a powerful dynamic for the entire composition. The human face is a frozen, faceless mask. He lets out a scream. In contrast to the tragic grimace of his face, the peaceful figures of two men are given. Munch's painting here achieves exceptional energy and tension, and emotions - sharpness and nakedness. The canvas is likened to a plastic metaphor of despair and loneliness. The picture became an important milestone not only in the work of Munch, but also in European art of that time. The Scream contained an entire program that charted the way forward. The extreme tension of feelings, the tragedy of the image, the feeling of the collapse of the world and the activity of the pictorial language, which has overcome the illusory, naturalistic vision - all these are signs of a new, not yet born art of the coming 20th century. Several years will pass, and the figurative and stylistic trends inherent in this picture will be continued by expressionist artists.
Scream (1893)
Scream (1895)
Melancholia (Yellow Boat) (1891-1892)
On the bridge (1893)
The creative fate of Munch, especially in the initial period, was connected with Germany. Munch first came here in 1892, he spent the next few years mainly in Berlin. Until 1907, Munch also visited other German cities - Warnemünde and Hamburg, Lübeck and Weimar. It is no coincidence that the artist captured their appearance in his works, creating a suite of city views. Ancient German towns appear in an ascetic rhythm high towers and pointed facades of houses. Munch had many friends in Germany. Here he received orders and sold his works. Here fame came to him and the first book about his work was published. In Germany, Munch entered the circle of writers and artists who united around the Pan magazine, which supported new trends in literature and art. Among them were the Swedish writer and artist August Strindberg, the Polish poet Stanisław Przybyszewski, the German art historian Julius Meyer-Graefe, who played a certain role in creative development Munch.
Madonna (1894-1895)
Vampire (1895-1902)
Particularly important in the biography of Munch is 1892. In the autumn of this year, a personal exhibition was opened in Berlin Norwegian master. The invitation came from the Berlin Association of Artists. Then Munch was not yet engaged in engraving, and more than fifty of his paintings were presented at the exhibition. paintings. The exhibition became an event in artistic life Berlin. The bold independence of Munch, who stepped over the narrow limits of naturalism, caused a storm of indignation. The resulting scandal led to a split in the Berlin Association of Artists. All these circumstances contributed to the wide popularity of Munch, first in Germany, and then beyond its borders.
In the 1900s in the work of Munch, a shift is planned, which later led to fundamentally new accents in his art. New features are already visible in the painting "Metabolism" in 1899, in which a reconciled man and woman are depicted against the backdrop of a landscape. The canvas was included in the cycle "Frieze of Life". The artist seeks to free himself from the magnetism of a pessimistic mood, to believe in other forces. It is no coincidence that in the process of working on the canvas, he refuses gloomy semantic attributes, although they are also interpreted ambiguously: the skull of an animal grows violently with leaves, the body buried in the ground, like tentacles, is embraced by the roots of a tree. Life conquers death. The picture becomes a symbol of the eternal rebirth of life. It was created on the eve of a new stage in Munch's work, at a time when gloomy notes gradually subside, the motifs of despair and loneliness that have sounded in his works for so long disappear. The pathos of the affirmation of life comes to replace it. It was a time when the artist overcomes a difficult internal crisis.
Metabolism (1896-1898)
In 1909, Munch, after a stay in the clinic caused by many months of nervous depression, returned to his homeland. In search of peace and quiet, he seeks solitude - for some time he lives in Osgorstrand, Kragerø, Witsten, on the small island of Yeleya, and then in 1916 he acquires the Ekely estate, north of the Norwegian capital, which he did not leave until the end of his days. After 1900, the portrait became one of the leading genres in the artist's work. Munch, who had the subtle gift of a psychologist, was great master of this genre. Munch did not paint portraits of those people whom he did not know well, fixing the external similarity did not satisfy him. Portraits of the artist - research human soul. As a rule, Munch created portraits of those with whom he was on friendly terms or, less often, in business relations. With many of those portrayed, he was connected by bonds of creative friendship. The exception is the portraits of Friedrich Nietzsche in 1906, composed by the artist after talking with his sister famous philosopher. Munch's portraits are strict and ascetic, sometimes lyrical. They are free from excessive narrative. The artist avoided detailed description, secondary details, designed complex background. His attention is always focused on the face of the model, a psychological characteristic of a person, as a rule, endowed with a tense inner life and spiritual energy. One of the best among the picturesque portraits of Munch is the portrait he painted in 1909 of Professor Daniel Jacobson, the doctor who treated the artist. The portrait draws attention to the sharpness of the characterization of the image and the new features of the pictorial manner, which takes shape by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. The figure of Jacobson is depicted against the background of a tense symphony of yellow and red tones. The energetic drawing emphasizes the expressiveness of the posture and gestures. Painting retains its expression, at the same time acquiring signs of a new one: the portrait is painted with a temperamental, wide and free brush. A riot of colors, a dynamic texture are techniques in which impressionist principles are partly revived, but on a different basis. The artist brings conquest here artistic culture new time, resorting to Vangogh's intensity of color.
Portrait of Consul Christen Sandberg (1901)
Ibsen in the café of the Grand Hotel in Christiania (1902)
Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche (1906)
Professor Daniel Jacobson (1909)
In the works of Munch of the second decade of the twentieth century. post-impressionist phenomena are developing. Munch's painting style, reflecting his subjective emotional condition, is distinguished by a wide stroke, energetic texture, and also retains the drama of color, the dynamic construction of space. The stylization of the form now loses the emphasized planar-ornamental beginning. But the main line of creativity is changing its character and is now developing with slight deviations. It is known that after changing the painting style, it became difficult for the artist to sell his paintings. Even when he became a world-famous artist, mostly his early works were bought. Therefore, it happened that in the period of 1930-1940s. Munch dated them ten or fifteen years earlier. Prices early paintings Munch constantly grew. Increasingly, Munch turns to the theme of labor; images of workers, fishermen, and peasants appear in his paintings and graphics.
Abundance (1899-1900)
Spring Works (Krageryo) (1910)
Lumberjack (1913)
Spring Plowing (Ekelu) (1916)
The creative gift of the artist was clearly manifested in such a form of art as monumental painting. During 1909-1916. Munch worked on a series of decorative panels for the assembly hall of the university in Oslo (Christiania), timed to coincide with his centenary. Munch strove for simplicity and plain language of these works to tell about Norway. The composition "History" depicts an old man under the canopy of a giant oak - the "tree of life", telling the story of his country. In the center of the Alma Mater panel there is a figure of a mother with a baby in her arms, around her are figures of children playing and bathing. Panel "Sun", inspired by symphonic poem Richard Strauss "Zarathustra" is located on the central wall of the assembly hall. The golden halo of the gigantic hot sun, sending its rays to the earth, is depicted by the artist against the backdrop of a calm fjord and mighty rising rocks. Munch creates here a heroic image of the Norwegian landscape. It is no coincidence that Munch refers to this image, a source of power that affirms life. Now the gloomy, tragic visions that dominated the works of the turn of the century are being replaced by images of light and the sun. They affirm pictures of the world, full of clarity and harmony.
Following the first experience in monumental painting, a second one followed, no less important for determining the position of the artist, his view of the social, educational value of art. In 1921-1922. Munch performs monumental paintings in the working canteen at the Freya chocolate factory in Oslo. However, the Frieze of Workers he conceived was not implemented. This theme is reflected in the artist's numerous surviving sketches. Work on it continued in 1927-1933, at the same time, Munch was included in the competition for the decoration of the capital's town hall. The artist wanted to show the construction workers, the work of street workers, snow cleaners. The project remained unrealized. Later, a new generation of Norwegian artists, who also used the creative experience of Munch, completed the whole complex of monumental and decorative works in the town hall. The monumental work of Munch marked the beginning of the creation national school monumental painting, and also made it possible to consider him one of the outstanding masters of European monumental art 20th century
The idea of Munch's creative individuality will be incomplete, if not to say about his numerous graphic and pictorial self-portraits. They are imprinted spiritual path masters. Some of them are a kind of confessional monologues, revealing feelings, others are restrained, marked by a certain form of alienation that makes it difficult to penetrate into the depths. The artist now describes his appearance reliably, then refuses a literal complete resemblance, but rather seeks to create a psychologically adequate portrait, marked by intense lyricism. In the "Self-Portrait" of 1905, executed by the master's confident brush, the artist emphasizes a great portrait resemblance. This is the time of maturity, the time of success and finding oneself. In the energetic, strong-willed features of the face, anxiety and tension lurk. Munch does not reveal himself, he is reserved, reserved. The appearance of the artist in "Self-Portrait with a Cigarette", endowed with a certain amount of narcissism, appears differently. In the outlined features of the face - fatigue and bitterness. Flowing smoke, diverging in concentric background rings that create the rhythmic basis of the composition, and uneven, changing light evoke a feeling of overcoming materiality, turning the image into a vision, almost a mirage. In Munch's self-portraits, romantic in spirit in early period, full of anxiety, bitterness and pain or courageous humility and fatigue in mature, appears the path of his spiritual wanderings. They contain the fate of Munch, a man and an artist who went through the decline of one century and the upheavals of another.
Self-portrait - On the operating table (1902-1903)
Self-portrait (1905)
Self portrait with a cigarette (1908-1909)
Near the window. Self portrait (1942)
A large place in the work of Munch is occupied by landscapes, mainly Scandinavian. The artist painted mostly northern nature, capturing its unique originality. We feel the grandeur of its rocks, the harsh elements of the cold sea, the mysterious shimmer of the night sky. Pictures of nature are always refracted through the mood of the artist. Munch endows nature with significance, something unusual, bewitching, elevating it above the ordinary appears in it. Sometimes the chosen motives themselves contribute to this. Such a constant motif in Munch's painting and graphics was moonlight, which transforms everything earthly, bringing the image to the surreal. He often painted night landscapes, their mysterious dusk, the northern white nights, which in his canvases turn into a kind of dream-like vision. The master emphasizes the severe grandeur and monumentality of the Norwegian landscape, conveying its characteristic features: the sky hanging low over the cold sea, deserted rocks polished by water and time, a lonely house on the shore. The sparse, reliable description, the tense language of black and white engraving help the artist to create a universal, timeless image of nature. The motives of the winter landscape in Munch's painting are not rare.
Train smoke (1900)
White Night(1901)
Summer night(On the Shore) (1902)
Sun (1909-1911)
Scenery. Study (1912)
Coastal Winter Landscape (1915)
Spring landscape with a red house (Ekelu) (1935-1940)
One of famous series landscapes in Munch's work are "Girls on the Bridge (White Night)". Swift lines of bridges, frozen, bewitched figures of girls, a lake mirror and powerful silhouettes of trees with lush crowns move from one composition to another. A feature of this landscape is the complete fusion of man with nature into a single spiritualized whole, their eternal harmony. The painting “Women on the Bridge” is saturated with a special expression of feeling, which the artist achieves with the help of intense-sounding, hot red and orange-yellow tones that flood the entire landscape. The conditional color and pictorial-plastic characterization of the depicted landscape gives rise to a generalized image of Norwegian nature, full of intense lyricism and in-depth contemplation. In this late and, perhaps, the most major work of Munch, filled with sun and light, the artist embodied his love for life, admiration for the beauty and harmony of nature.
Girls on the Bridge (Summer Night) (1903)
Women on the Bridge (Osgorsrann) (1935)
In the art of the twentieth century. Munch entered as eminent master graphics with individual creative style. His merit is the transformation of engraving into an independent area of national artistic culture. Big role lithography and woodcuts played in his art, a smaller one - etching, which mainly occupied him at the beginning. Munch's first engravings appeared in 1894 and quickly won success with collectors and the public. Already in 1895, Julius Meyer-Gdrefe published nine etchings by Munch. A year later, Ambroise Vollard included the lithograph "Fear" in the first volume of the "Album of painters-engravers". In 1904, German patrons Arnold Litauer and Paul Cassirer began selling Munch's engravings. In 1906, Gustav Schefler published the first volume of a catalog of his graphic works. It included about three hundred sheets. All this to a large extent contributed to the European fame of the artist. Munch's graphics did not separate into a separate, independent sphere of his work. As a rule, most of the plots, motifs, compositions were developed in parallel in painting and engraving. Moreover, Munch translated into graphics the work that originally arose in painting.
Oak (1903)
Madonna with Brooch (1903)
Cat (1913-1914)
Munch's graphics strike with a variety of techniques. In a short period of time, he mastered all its types: black-and-white and color lithography, varieties of etching, tone and color woodcuts. Many of the sheets are made in mixed media to achieve the greatest expressiveness and sharpness of the image. Often the artist prefers a clear, sharp drypoint technique and hard edged woodcuts. The inflexibility and rigidity of the material create a special, additional intensity of the image. Munch emphasizes the texture of wood in his woodcuts, using it as artistic technique. It was he who first began to use spruce boards, which were later carried away by the expressionists. Realizing his plan, Munch overcame any difficulties of execution. Munch experimented a lot in color engraving, using mixed media. The language of these works is based on a laconic composition, devoid of verbosity, local color, often decided on a clash of tones. In color woodcut Moonlight» 1901. The woman's face, shrouded in mystery, is captured by the soft glow of moonlight. The cold light of the moon and clear planes of green and warm brown tones are restrainedly juxtaposed. Moonlight gently separates the light shadow from the female figure and reveals in relief the texture of the wall of the house, combined with the material and linear pattern of the engraving board. The transformative power of the light that empowers the world mystery and illusory, its ability to influence the state of the human soul determine the content of this sheet.
Moonlight (1901)
The last years of the artist's life are connected with the dark events of European history. War intervened in his destiny. When in 1940 Nazi Germany occupied Norway, Munch was 76 years old. During this period, Munch led a reclusive life, almost did not leave Ekel, continuing to work intensively. A new period of life has begun under the occupation authorities. With them, Munch did not make any compromises. The Nazis did not dare to directly persecute famous artist. Munch decisively refused the invitation to participate in the "honorary council of art" and the celebration of his 80th birthday.
The personality traits of Munch, an artist and a person, come through clearly in these episodes of his life. They are captured in the artist's letters, books of his contemporaries, his statements, saturated with sharp, sometimes paradoxical thoughts. Munch was different: tragic, calm, disturbing. A difficult, unbalanced, even strange man, Munch was a person who was far from the ordinary circumstances of life, but at the same time became a mirror of the spiritual collisions and upheavals of the turn of the century. Silent, unsociable, ironic, gloomy and suspicious, soft and touchy, uncompromising, doubting and dissatisfied with himself - evidence of his searches and wanderings. Munch found it difficult to get along with people, although he had enough friends: preferring loneliness, he still strove to be among them.
In 1963, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth, the Munch Museum was opened in his homeland in Oslo. His work is a dialogue between the artist and life. Munch's art is ambiguous. How great artist, Munch expressed in his work the sharpest spiritual collisions of the turn of the century, the era of social confusion, when the artist could not help but feel the inevitability of the collapse of the old. The new seemed still disturbing, unclear. That is why Munch's art is so tense and tragic.
Dance of Life (1900)
Family on the Road (1903)
Four Girls (Osgarstrand) (1905)
Nude (1913)
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The talented Norwegian artist Edvard Munch is considered by many Western connoisseurs of painting to be the founder of a new era of art. This name is well known in the West, where the works created by Edvard Munch take pride of place in the same row with such famous masters as Gauguin and Cezanne.
In Russia, Munch's work is not well known, but not a single person who saw his canvases remained indifferent. Most of the works contain motifs of loneliness and death, however, the majority of Russians are familiar with the painting by the Norwegian artist on the canvas “Girls on the Bridge”, located in the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin.
Edvard Munch painted this painting in a style radically different from his other works, reflecting a state of spiritual joy that rarely appears in an artist. Over the course of several years, the painter created seven versions of this canvas. One of them, written in 1903, was brought to Russia from Paris by the collector Ivan Morozov.
The biography of Edvard Munch is well known to fans of his work. Most of them believe that the events experienced by the future artist in childhood influenced creativity, filling the painted canvases with gloomy colors. However, among the works are also picturesque and graphic portraits of famous people, magnificent landscapes with northern nature.
Childhood and youth of the Norwegian artist
Edvard Munch was born in the small town of Latten, located in the Norwegian province of Hedmark. His father was military doctor Christian Munch, and his mother was Laura Katrine Bjelstad, who was born into a family of a merchant. Some time later, the Munch family moved to the capital of Norway, Oslo.
Edward's father started a family late, however, five children appeared in it. The carefree childhood of Edvard Munch ended in the year of the death of his mother, who died of tuberculosis. The boy was then six years old. Nine years later, his older sister Sophie died of the same disease at the age of fifteen.
These sad events radically changed the father of the family. The cheerful storyteller and dreamer grieved over the loss of his wife, and then his daughter, becoming a strict, extremely pious person. The future artist himself often suffered from bronchitis in childhood, attacks of acute rheumatism forced him to stay in bed for a long time, skipping classes at school.
Remembering childhood, Munch spoke of him as a bleak time filled with losses. The father believed that his son should become an engineer, insisting that the boy enter the Higher Technical School. However, Edward quickly realized that he sees his future in the creative profession.
He left his studies at a technical school and entered the State Academy of Arts. The first teacher of Edvard Munch was the sculptor J. Middletun, and then the young man studied painting with Christian Krogh, a famous Norwegian artist. At this time, Munch began to get involved in painting landscapes, the most popular genre in national painting.
At the same time, gloomy motifs appear on the canvases. With the help of paintings, the artist visually reflects own emotions and mood. Loneliness and death become the heroes of his works. Tragic events continue in the life of a young painter - his father and younger brother die, his sister, who suffered from a mental illness, passes away.
These losses caused Munch to renounce religion and search new system values. He argues that there is no meaning in human life, and immortality can only be achieved in art. According to the artist, the meaning of life is given only by paintings that reflect his experiences.
First exhibition
For the first time a personal exhibition of works by Edvard Munch took place in 1889 in Christiania (as the capital of Norway, Oslo, was then called). Its results brought the young artist both grief and joy. Critics took Munch's work negatively, however, such a reaction drew attention to his work by European avant-garde artists.
As a result of the exhibition, the artist received a state scholarship, which provided Munch with the opportunity to continue his art education abroad. For about three years he lived and worked in Berlin and Paris, where he became closely acquainted with the work of famous post-impressionists of that time. Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh had a strong influence on Munch's work.
In the 1990s, Edward created a cycle of paintings known as the Frieze of Life. The painter devoted each canvas of the cycle to life's troubles and passions. Munch showed the works of this cycle at exhibitions in Berlin (1902) and Prague (1905). The first exhibition in Berlin was the reason great scandal, but at the same time his work was recognized by the creative intelligentsia.
At this time, the artist created paintings that became the most famous. Munch later translated many of the paintings into graphics. He again and again turned to the written works, creating some in a dozen versions, using various techniques - painting, pastel, graphics.
The famous "Scream", originally presented to the public under the title "Nature's Cry", was written in 1893. Then three more versions of this painting were created in different techniques. Already in the first version, signs of expressionism are clearly visible, which was further developed in the work of the master. The image of horror that appeared in this work of the artist appeared in subsequent works of the painter.
In 1909, Munch returned to Norway, where he acquired an estate near Christiania. He receives large orders for the design of public buildings, paints portraits and landscapes, and also continues to create paintings on the topics that made his work famous. In this estate, the life of the famous Norwegian painter ended. Edvard Munch died of a cold in January 1944.
The most famous paintings by Edvard Munch with titles
Despair 1892 
Alarm 1894 
Category Name: Edvard Munch
Age: 80 years old
Activity: painter, graphic artist, art theorist
Family status: not married
Edvard Munch: biography
Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" is now much better known than the biography of the Norwegian artist. His life, gloomy and painful, was filled with death, mental disorders, disappointment. At the end of his days, Edvard Munch left an entry in his diary:
"Illness, madness and death were black angels that flocked to my cradle to accompany me throughout my life."
Childhood and youth
Edward was born on December 12, 1863 in the Norwegian city of Løten to Christian Munch and Laura Katrina Bjölstad. The boy had an older sister Johanna Sofia and two younger ones - Igner and Laura, as well as a brother Andreas. The childhood of the future artist passed in moving: partly because of Christian's profession - a military doctor, partly in search of cheaper housing.
Although the Munch family lived in poverty, influential people adjoined their family. creative personalities. So, a distant relative was the artist Jacob Munch. Edward's grandfather was remembered by the world as a talented preacher, and Christian's brother, Peter Andreas, is an outstanding historian.
When little Edward was 5 years old, his mother died of tuberculosis, and her sister Karen took over the household. Christian, being a religious man, fell into fanaticism after the death of his wife. He told his sons and daughters blood-chilling stories about hell, and because of this, Edward often had nightmares. To escape from disturbing visions, the boy painted. Even then, his sketches looked talented.
In 1877, Edward's elder sister, Sophia, died of tuberculosis. The young man was close to her, so he took the loss hard. A sad event caused disappointment in the faith. In his diary, Munch recalled that his father "walked up and down the room with his hands clasped in prayer," but this did not help the girl to recover. The days spent with the dying sister were later reflected in the paintings "Sick Girl" and "Spring".
Disease in one way or another haunted the Munch family. Shortly after Sophie's death, another of Edward's sisters, Laura, began acting strangely. She often worried, threw tantrums, other days she sat quietly and did not talk to anyone. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Christian saw his son as an engineer, so in 1879, at the age of 16, Edward entered a technical college. He was easily given physics, chemistry and mathematics. Despite the successes, a year later the young man expelled, deciding to become an artist. The father did not support the boy's undertakings: he considered creativity to be vulgar. Despite protests, in 1881 young painter entered the Royal School of Drawing in Oslo.
In 1883, the name Edvard Munch was first heard in Norwegian society. As a creative debut, the expressionist presented "Head Study". From this began the formation of a great artist.
Painting
In subsequent years, Munch repeatedly participated in exhibitions, but his works were lost among the brightness of shades and the loudness of the artists' names. In 1886, Edward presented his dear "Sick Girl" and received a flurry of negative reviews. One of the local newspapers published this review:
“The best service that can be rendered to Edvard Munch is to silently pass by his paintings. Munch's paintings significantly lowered the level of the exhibition."
The reason for criticism was the visible incompleteness of the work and shapelessness. The young artist was accused of unwillingness to improve technique and develop.
And Munch considered The Sick Girl to be his breakthrough. 11-year-old Betsy Nielsen posed for him as a model. One day she turned to Edward's father for help - her younger brother broke his leg. The girl was so excited and beautiful with flushed tearful eyes that the young painter asked her to become a model.
After harsh criticism, Edward ceased to be sincere, his painting is uninteresting and stiff. A year later, in 1889, he tried again to tell about his sister in the film "Spring". Creating it, Munch acted as an impressionist: you can see how the curtains sway and feel sunlight pouring out of the window.
On the canvas, the heavy atmosphere that reigns in the room is opposed to the summer day. The red-haired girl, leaning back on the pillow, looks longingly at the elderly woman, in her hands is the medicine. There are no bright colors in the clothes, it looks more like a mourning shroud. It is felt that soon death will knock on their door.
At the end of 1889, when Munch went to study in Paris, news came of his father's death. The artist fell into depression, cut off ties with friends. This event became one of the key in the work of the expressionist. He then wrote in his diary:
“You should no longer paint interiors, reading men and knitting women. They will be replaced by real people who breathe and feel, love and suffer…”.
In memory of his father, Edward painted the painting "Night in San Cloud". In an apartment flooded with night light, a man is sitting by the window. Modern art historians they see in this image both Munch himself and his father, who is awaiting death.
Returning to his homeland, the artist began work on a series of works, which later became known as "The Frieze of Life: a poem about love, life and death." In it, Munch wanted to reflect the stages of human development - from birth to death. The cycle includes key works: "Madonna", "Scream", "Dance of Life", "Ashes". There are 22 paintings in total, divided into four groups: "The Birth of Love", "The Rise and Fall of Love", "Fear of Life" and "Death".
Included in the "Frieze of Life" and the painting "Melancholy" in 1881. Critics did not accept it with enthusiasm, but noted that Munch gained own style- bright outlines, simple shapes and the twilight reigning in all works. The complete cycle was first presented in 1902.
In the work of Edvard Munch, there are more than one hundred paintings, but the most famous of them was "The Scream". In the usual edition, it depicts a humanoid creature, the sky is painted with bright orange-red hues. The scream escaping from the lipless mouth of the humanoid seems to melt the landscape around. Two more figures are visible behind. In his diary, Munch wrote:
“I was walking along the path with two friends, the sun was setting, suddenly the sky turned blood red, I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned against the fence - I looked at the blood and flames over the bluish-black fjord and the city, my friends went on, and I stood trembling with excitement, feeling the endless cry piercing nature.
Impressed by what he saw in 1892, the artist painted the painting "Despair". Instead of a common creature, it depicts a man in a hat. A year later, Munch sketched a humanoid in pastel, then painted it with his own oil. Later, two more were added to these versions. Especially popular is the image of 1893, which is stored in the National Museum in Oslo.
Art historians found a place where Edward could see the painting. An interesting fact is that earlier the largest slaughterhouse in Oslo and a mental hospital were located near this place. The researcher of Munch's creativity noted:
"It was said that the cries of slaughtered animals, mixed with the cries of the mentally ill, were unbearable."
This is probably where the "endless cry that pierces nature" came from.
1894 was marked by the appearance of two works - "Maturation" and "Girl and Death". Both paintings combine contrasting phenomena. So, in "Maturation" a black, frightening shadow hung over a young, fragile girl, frightened by her nakedness.
In The Girl and Death, a buxom beauty kisses a skeletal death, accepting her as her best friend. Such opposition is characteristic of modernity.
Munch created paintings in different genres: portrait, landscape, still life. IN late period his work became crude and his subjects simple. More often, peasants and fields appeared on his canvases.
Personal life
Edvard Munch was not married and had no children, but 3 of his novels are known.
In 1885 he met Milli Thaulov. The girl was married, so she did not take the young man's advances seriously, but she did not reject them either. Edward took falling in love seriously: for him to have an affair with married woman meant to cross all religious barriers. Having never received reciprocity from Milli, Munch abandoned the idea of winning her.
In 1892, the artist met Stanisław Przybyszewski, a Pole by nationality, and his future wife, Dagni Yul. The girl became a muse for Munch, he repeatedly used her image in his paintings. Researchers admit the possibility that there was a love affair between young people.
The most painful was the affair with Tulla (Mathilde) Larsen, which began in 1898. At first, their relationship developed well, then the woman began to tire Munch with obsession. In 1902, she felt the coldness of her beloved and threatened to commit suicide. Frightened, Edward came to her.
A few days later, a quarrel broke out between them, as a result of which Munch shot himself in the hand. According to the widespread version, Tulla wanted to shoot herself, and the artist pulled the trigger in an attempt to snatch the revolver. The man was hospitalized, and the relationship ended there.
Until his death, a beloved woman did not appear in Munch's personal life.
Death
The artist was in poor health, but in 1918 he overcame the "Spanish flu", which killed millions of people. In 1930, he was almost blind due to a hemorrhage in the vitreous body of his right eye, but he did not give up painting.
A month after his 80th birthday, in 1944, the artist died. His posthumous photo is kept in the Munch Museum in Oslo.
After the death of the expressionist, all the paintings were transferred to the state. Thousands of oil paintings and engravings today make up the main exposition of the Munch Museum.
References to the artist are found in art books and films. So, in 1974, the film "Edvard Munch" was released, which tells about the years of the formation of an expressionist.
Paintings
- 1886 - "Sick Girl"
- 1892 - "Despair"
- 1893 - "Scream"
- 1893 - "Death in the sick room"
- 1894 - "Madonna"
- 1894 - "Ashes"
- 1895 - "Vampire"
- 1895 - "Jealousy"
- 1896 - "Voice" ("Summer Night")
- 1897 - "The Kiss"
- 1900 - "Dance of Life"
- 1902 - "Four Ages in Life"
- 1908 - "Self-portrait against the blue sky"
- 1915 - "At the deathbed" ("Fever")
- 1919 - "Self-portrait after the Spanish flu"
Today we will talk about the Norwegian painter and graphic artist, art theorist and theater artist Edvard Munch. He is considered a representative of expressionism, and one of the first. His work has a great influence on contemporaries to this day. His paintings abound with themes of loneliness and death, as well as the lust for life. This man created unique breathtaking paintings that literally dragged the viewer into a different, strange and terrible world. E. Munch is a real talent and master of his craft. He painted pictures only when feelings and emotions overwhelmed him: after all, real creators create masterpieces in this state.
Childhood
The artist Edvard Munch, whose date of birth falls on 1863, was born into a large family. His father, Christian, was a military doctor. Munch had an older sister, Johanna Sofia, brother Andreas, and two younger sisters, Laura and Inger. The family lived rather modestly, one might even say poorly. But the Munches were educated and cultured people, so they steadfastly endured their temporary position. Their cultural roots were quite deep: a distant relative was a famous neoclassical painter, a student of Jacques-Louis David himself. Christian Munch's father was a preacher whom many knew and loved, and his brother, Peter Andreas Munch, was an excellent historian.
Throughout Edward's childhood, his family moved frequently from place to place. This was due to the debt of the father's service, and also due to the fact that the lack of Money regularly pressured the family to look for cheaper housing. Most often, the family was in Christiania, Norway (now Oslo). The biography of Edvard Munch has dark spots since childhood: at the age of 5 he lost his mother, who died of tuberculosis. And exactly 10 years later, Sophie's older sister died of the same disease. In his memoirs, E. Munch said that his father was always kind, but his religiosity, which crossed all the boundaries of common sense, was a big minus. Little Edward was often tormented by terrible visions of hell, because of this he grew up as a rather anxious child. Much later, relatives recalled that the boy's talent for drawing manifested itself in a very early age.
As mentioned earlier, Edward's sister, Sophie, died of tuberculosis. This was another blow for him, as they were very close. Many researchers of the life and work of the painter say that this was a turning point of disappointment in religion. The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch himself recalled that on that day his father was restlessly rushing around the room, hands clasped in prayer, but could not help the poor girl in any way. In the future, these memories formed the basis of the painting "Sick Girl".
Formation
The biography of Edvard Munch continues through the formative years. He enters a technical college, where he studies excellently. exact sciences. The guy is often sick, but tries not to miss classes. Soon the young man makes an independent decision to leave college to become an artist. In 1881 he entered the Royal School of Drawing in Christiania. His mentor is the naturalist Christian Krogh. He quickly introduced the young man to the metropolitan bohemia. Thanks to Christian Krogh, Edward meets the anarchist writer Hans Jaeger. They quickly found a common language, and Munch often felt the influence of this man. In 1883, Edward made his public debut - he presented the painting "Head Study". At the end of the following year, he received a scholarship, which he went to France. In 1886, Munch presented his painting "Sick Girl", critics took it very negatively. The rejection confused Munch, and his next paintings were conservative.
Paris
Munch's paintings still participated in exhibitions. And the artist himself, after a short break, went to France. Here he attended the lessons of Leon Bonn, went to exhibitions. He experimented a lot with artistic styles, especially often tried impressionism and pointillism. Edward soon learns of his father's death, and the news hits him hard. He does not have time for the funeral and falls into a long depression. who experienced times of stagnation, came out of depression and creates one of the most famous paintings - "Night in Saint-Cloud".
"Frieze of Life"
In 1890, the biography of Edvard Munch brightens a little: an exhibition of his paintings is held in Christiania, where he receives more benevolent responses. Soon he goes to Nice to rest, and sees Gauguin here, whom he will admire a little later. At this time, Munch's style was finally formed - clear lines, symbolic plots and simple forms. Returning to Norway, he paints the paintings "Melancholy" and "Frieze of Life". From last picture the famous "Scream" will soon grow. After some time, he meets A. Norman, who is in awe of Edward's work. A wealthy patron arranges solo exhibitions for Munch in Berlin. The artist's paintings receive a lot of positive feedback, for the first time he feels real recognition. At this time, Munch begins an affair with a wealthy Norwegian, which ended in nothing but psychological trauma.
Disease
Because of the nervous romance, Munch begins to feel uneasy, but does not attach much importance to this. Soon he has another relationship with a cellist. But this novel also ends with a difficult parting due to strange behavior Munch. He becomes increasingly aggressive and suspicious. All a large number of people notice that Edward becomes quick-tempered and invites himself to quarrels. In 1908 he was placed in a psychiatric hospital in Copenhagen with a diagnosis of mental disorder. He spends six months there, actively engaged in creativity.
Later years
Edvard Munch, Interesting Facts about which there are not so numerous, nevertheless it can tell something. So, he was often tormented by hallucinations, which he described in his diary. It is also believed that he was afraid of red-haired women. In the last years of his work, his paintings acquired coarser features, but more peaceful subjects. In 1916 he buys a villa where he gardens. Two years later, he falls ill with "Spanish flu", but quickly recovers. In 1930, he had problems with his eyesight, due to which he almost stopped writing. When Norway was occupied, Munch was called a "true Nordic" artist. Soon the attitude of the Nazis towards Edward changed and he was stigmatized. In recent years, he lived with the fear that his paintings would be confiscated from own house. The artist died in 1944, a month after his 80th birthday.
"Scream"
Edvard Munch is an impressionist who gained immense popularity with his painting The Scream. In total there are 4 versions of it, which were written in the period 1893-1910. Initially, the author called it "Despair". The terrified man in the painting quickly became one of the most recognizable characters in art. One version of the painting is in the hands of an independent collector. The sale of the painting at auction made The Scream the most expensive work of art.
Painting theft
The biography of Edvard Munch continues today, because in his paintings there is himself. His works of art very often became the subject of sharing by intruders. In 1994, he was kidnapped famous painting"Scream" from National Gallery. The criminals did not think well of the theft, so after a couple of months the painting was returned. Munch's painting "Vampire" was also stolen. True, law enforcement agencies managed to conduct a successful investigation, thanks to which the "Vampire" was found. In 2004, a group of thieves took out variations of the paintings "Madonna" and "The Scream" from the Munch Museum. In 2006, they were returned to the Museum, and the attackers received their punishment. However, both paintings were damaged. After the paintings were returned to the Museum, they were found to have scratches, traces of moisture, abrasions and peeled edges. The restorers did everything they could, but some stains remained visible.
