The year 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edvard Munch, and his home country of Norway is humming with Munch Year events. In the capital of Oslo, the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design and the Munch Museum are co-hosting the exhibition “Munch 150.” The exhibit looks back on Munch’s career through 220 paintings and 50 prints and other works selected from the more than 20,000 pieces that the artist referred to as “my children.”
Munch is known for his works on the themes of life and death that can be traced back to his experience of losing family members at a young age.
Munch’s mother died when he was five and his sister when he was 13. The deaths drove his father, who was a doctor, to mental illness. The girl portrayed in his early work
The Sick Child is Munch’s beloved older sister who died from tuberculosis. Hopelessness and loneliness arising from the successive deaths in his family as well as constant anxieties and fears of illness and death due to his own sickliness were a major influence on Munch’s works.
Upon moving to Berlin in 1892, Munch started what would become his lifework
The Frieze of Life. The works in this series depict love and betrayal, anxieties, jealousy and death. Among the paintings were his major pieces,
The Scream (Fig. 1),
Vampire and
Madonna. Munch envisioned
The Frieze of Life as a series of decorative pictures that together would portray life as a whole. Rather than independent pieces, he created the paintings to resonate among each other like parts of a symphony. Munch showed the 22 works that comprise
The Frieze of Life at the 1902 Berlin Secession Exhibition. At the Munch 150 exhibit, the frieze will be recreated for the first time in 110 years.
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Fig.2 Edvard Munch: The Sun, 1911, Olje på lerret, 455 x 780 cm, Universitetet i Oslo, Aulaen,
© Munch-museet / Munch-Ellingsen Gruppen / BONO 2013,
Photo: © Munch-museet , © Munch-museet / Munch-Ellingsen Gruppen / BONO |
In 1909, at age 45, Munch returned to Norway. Coming into contact once again with the plentiful nature of his homeland after many years abroad, Munch’s works took a turn toward harmony and tradition. In 1916, he completed the 11-piece mural
The University Aula in the auditorium of the University of Oslo. The piece in the main end of the auditorium illuminates the room with strong rays from
The Sun (Fig. 2) while the other works show Norway’s abundant nature blessed by this sunlight. After finishing this work, Munch continued actively with murals including
The Freia Freize for a chocolate factory and a piece for the Oslo city hall. The artist whose works ranged from
The Scream tormented with despair to
The Sun brimming with hope died on January 23, 1944.
The exhibit takes place at two sites. The works from 1882 to 1903 are on display at the National Museum. The works from 1904 to 1944 are on display at the Munch Museum. Munch 150 will be shown until October 13, 2013.
