Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch (1863–1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose psychologically charged images, including The Scream, helped shape modern art.
The Scream: A composition by Edvard Munch, created in several versions, depicting a figure beneath a turbulent sky. Its distorted figure and landscape became Munch’s most recognizable image of existential anxiety.
Frieze of Life: A cycle of paintings by Edvard Munch exploring love, anxiety, illness, and death. Munch grouped recurring images into a larger account of human emotional experience.
Ådalsbruk: A village in Innlandet, Norway, where Edvard Munch was born in 1863. Munch’s Norwegian upbringing began in a family marked by illness and bereavement.
Munch controversy in Berlin: The 1892 Berlin exhibition of Edvard Munch’s paintings, closed after provoking intense debate among artists and critics. The uproar brought Munch sudden attention and helped establish his reputation beyond Norway.
The Sick Child: A series of paintings and prints by Edvard Munch portraying a dying child and a grieving adult. Munch repeatedly reworked this subject, treating memory and grief as material for formal experimentation.
Lithography: A printmaking process in which an image is drawn on a flat surface and transferred through chemical resistance between oil and water. Munch used lithography to reproduce and vary compositions such as The Scream.
Christian Krohg: A Norwegian painter, writer, and teacher associated with the naturalist and bohemian circles of Kristiania. Krohg taught Munch and supported his early development as an artist.
German Expressionism: A modern art movement in Germany that emphasized subjective feeling through distortion, intense color, and simplified forms. Munch’s work influenced artists who developed Expressionism in Germany.
Madonna (Munch): A motif by Edvard Munch depicting a nude woman with closed eyes, rendered in several paintings and prints. Its sensual, ambiguous image shows Munch’s recurring entanglement of love, sexuality, and mortality.
Woodcut: A relief-printing technique in which an image is cut into a wooden block and printed from its raised surface. Munch exploited the wood grain and color separation to make prints with distinctive textures.