Edvard Munch - Artist research

Edvard Munch was born in Norway in 1863 and, with the notable exception of the two decades from 1889 to 1909 spent traveling, studying, working and exhibiting in France and Germany, he lived there until his death in 1944. He was active as a painter from the 1880s until shortly before his death, though the greater part of his oeuvre, and certainly the better known part, was produced before the early 1920s. During his lifetime of work, he made one of the most significant and enduring contributions to the development of Modernism in the twentieth century. In his themes and subject matter, in the manner in which he gave voice to these, and in his handling of paint and the graphic media (especially woodcut and lithography), Munch was profoundly original and radical. He is one of the handful of artists who have shaped our understanding of human experience and transformed the ways in which it might be visually expressed. Born in 1863 in Löten, Norway, famed painter Edvard Munch established a free-flowing, psychological-themed style all his own. His painting "The Scream" ("The Cry"; 1893), is one of the most recognizable works in the history of art. His later works proved to be less intense, but his earlier, darker paintings ensured his legacy. A testament to his importance, "The Scream" sold for more than $119 million in 2012—setting a new record. Edvard Munch was born on December 12, 1863, in Löten, Norway, the second of five children. In 1864, Munch moved with his family to the city of Oslo, where his mother died four years later of tuberculosis—he beginning of a series of familial tragedies in Munch's life: His sister, Sophie, also died of tuberculosis, in 1877 at the age of 15; another of his sisters spent most of her life institutionalized for mental illness; and his only brother died of pneumonia at age 30. In 1879, Munch began attending a technical college to study engineering, but left only a year later when his passion for art overtook his interest in engineering. In 1881, he enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design. The following year, he rented a studio with six other artists and entered his first show, at the Industries and Art Exhibition.          

Success wasn't enough to tame Munch's inner demons for long, however, and as the 1900s began, his drinking spun out of control. In 1908, hearing voices and suffering from paralysis on one side, he collapsed and soon checked himself into a private sanitarium, where he drank less and regained some mental composure. In the spring of 1909, he checked out, eager to get back to work, but as history would show, most of his great works were behind him. 

Munch moved to a country house in Ekely (near Oslo), Norway, where he lived in isolation and began painting landscapes. He nearly died of influenza in the pandemic of 1918-19, but recovered and would survive for more than two decades thereafter (he died at his country home in Ekley on January 23, 1944). Munch painted right up to his death, often depicting his deteriorating condition and various physical maladies in his work.

In May 2012, Munch's "The Scream" went on the auction block, selling at Sotheby's in New York for more than $119 million—a record-breaking price—sealing its reputation as one of the most famous and important works of art ever produced . Throughout his life Munch made portraits, both informally of family members and of his lovers and friends, and also fulfilling private commissions, on a personal level, his work in this genre encompassed the early portraits of his beloved sister Inger especially, and portraits of the Kristiania Bohemians, Hans Jaeger and Christian Krohg. In Berlin he again painted those in his circle, such Marcel Archinard, and his Polish literary friend Stanislaw Przybyszewsky. But there were also official portraits: the German banker and art patron Walther Rathenau, and Dr. Linde, the medical specialist who befriended him and who commissioned a version of The frieze of life for his children's study. 

Munch's depictions of women are well known and celebrated - perhaps because of their singular directness about sexuality and their emotional impact. Art history has been inclined to judge Munch's imaging of women as bordering on misogynistic and compliant with the extreme stereotyping of the female which characterizes Symbolist art. While there are certainly many examples which are consistent with these assessment, especially in the early depictions of female sexuality and erotic power in The frieze of life, there are as many which demonstrate a nuanced, sympathetic and perceptive understanding of women, both collectively and as individuals. The tenderness expressed in the numerous depictions of his sister Inger, the admiring recognition of strength, wit and character in portraits of friends such as Aase Norregaard are matched by an unambiguous recognition - in the drawings of Consolation and Weeping young woman and the depiction of emotional states such as loneliness in Two human beings.