Edvard Munch
Girls on the Bridge
1905
Oil on Canvas
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne
Expressionism
Edvard Munch Biography
Eduard Munch was a Norwegian painter known for his free-flowing, psychological-themed style paintings. Munch’s painting, The Scream, is one of the most famous works of art in history. His other paintings are less intense and therefore less famous, but his legacy was surely certified by his darker and gloomier paintings. Eduard Munch was born on December 1863 in small city in Norway called Loton. He was the second of five children. In 1864, Munch and his family moved to Oslo, where his mother died of tuberculosis after four years. After this tragic incident, a series of tragedies followed in Munch’s life: Sophie, Munch’s sister, also died of tuberculosis in 1877 at the age of 15. Furthermore, Munch’s other sister spent most of her life in a hospital for mental illness. Finally, his only brother died at the age of thirty from pneumonia. In 1879, Munch went to a technical college to study engineering. However, he ended up leaving the college in order to pursue his greater interest and passion: art. In 1881, Munch attended the Royal School of Art and Design. Only within a year, he was able to fund his own art show at the Industries and Art Exhibition alongside six other Norwegian artists. After three years of study and practice in the Royal School of Art and Design, Much received a scholarship and traveled to Paris, where he spent three weeks. Then, he returned to Oslo and started working on new paintings, one of which was The Sick Child, which was finished in 1886. The painting was based on his sister’s death and marked his break from Impressionism and into Expressionism. In 1889, Munch’s father, who was extremely unsupportive of Munch’s life career of art, died. Munch continued on living in France, funded by state scholarships. Following his father’s death, Munch lived through his most productive and troubled period of his artistic life. During that time, Munch painted Melancholy, Jealousy, Despair, Anxiety, and The Scream. Munch’s mental state was on full display, and his style varied greatly depending on which emotion had taken hold of him while working on each particular painting. After this hard time in his life, Munch became one of the most famous artists at the time gaining praise for his famous painting, The Scream. Despite his success and fame, Munch’s life was colored by excessive drinking, family misfortune, and mental distress. As the 1900s kicked in, Munch’s drinking was uncontrollable. He could not suppress his anger and grief. In 1908, Munch started hearing voices and suffering paralysis on one side. He eventually collapsed and soon checked himself into a private sanitarium, where he drank less and regained some of his mental senses. Shortly after that, he checked out, and got back to work with a stronger determination and eagerness; however, as history manifests, most of his great works were behind him. In the final stages of his life, Munch moved back to Norway in a small country house in Ekely. He painted landscapes and lived in isolation in that house. He struggled through influenza in 1918 and 1919 but managed to live through it. In 1944, he finally died, painting till the last moment of his death. Towards the end of his life, Munch painted the slow deterioration of his health and body. In 2012, Munch’s The Scream was sold for more than $119 million in New York signifying his great legacy in the history of art. |
Painting Analysis
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