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Edvard Munch, the Norwegian artist responsible for one of the 19th century’s most famous paintings, The Scream, had an unusual artistic trajectory. Born in 1863, he had a pensive childhood overshadowed by poverty and the death of his mother. He discovered art as a teenager, and at the age of 18 enrolled in the Royal School of Art and Design in Oslo (then named Kristiania). One of his teachers there was Christian Krohg, an influential realist artist who had been involved with the Skagen painters in Denmark and the Impressionists in Paris. During his student years Munch experimented with all of the popular styles going around, including Naturalism and Impressionism, but remained dissatisfied. 

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait, 1882

During this period he came under the influence of Nihilism, which lead him down a path of inner turmoil and self-examination and brought him to an interest in symbolism, the movement of the post-impressionists towards content over form. He received a great deal of criticism for this first work, although Krogh championed his ability as a painter. However, in the first odd twist of his career, his one-man show of this experimental work led to the receipt of a two-year scholarship to study with famed (and highly traditional) Parisian Leon Bonnat. He arrived in Paris in 1889 when the great Exposition Universelle was going on, where he was exposed to the work of Gaugin, van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec, who all had a tremendous influence on the shift in his work toward postmodernism. He spent less than a year in Paris, as his father died and he had to return home to Norway; but this time in Paris was a key part of his transformation into the Munch we know today. He did his first version of the famous The Scream in 1893, by which time he had settled into his new aesthetic. (Throughout his life, Munch would do the same image over and over, often with just slight changes and adjustments. He did four different versions of The Scream, two in pastel and two in oils.)

During this time Munch was still going through bouts of depressive melancholy and existential angst, as can be seen in his work, but through the 1890s his work began to receive considerable attention and, despite the fact that the majority of the crowds came to see his work because it was “violent and brutal”, it began to sell as well. Munch’s life as looking up. He gained patrons and bought a summer home in Norway, which remained his favorite inspiration throughout his life. In 1903 he held an exhibit in Paris, where it is suggested the Fauvists got the inspiration for their bold style. (He was indeed friends with many of them.) In another career twist, although his unusual work was receiving considerable recognition, Munch’s depressive tendencies, compounded by an increasing alcoholism, finally caught up with him and in 1908 he checked himself into a clinic for therapy.

This time transformed both his emotional state and his artwork; after the conclusion of his treatment, his work became brighter, with warmer subject matter, focusing on his friends, his horse, and his beloved Norwegian countryside. His work from this period, though it retains his bold style, feels like it could be from a different artist altogether, its emotional range is so much at odds with his earlier work. Particularly interesting is the way he shifts from capturing the dark side of nature in his early work (he has many works, including The Scream, which were inspired by the Norwegian sunsets but interpret it not as a thing of beauty but as a thing of despair) to celebrating the beauty and color of nature (consider his Varlandscap below).  Although his final years were overshadowed by the rise of Nazism and the occupation of Norway (Hitler had him on the list of ‘degenerate artists’), the majority of his work did survive World War II and gives us the record of a creative personality who was adept at capturing his emotions in the entire range, from despair to delight. 

Edvard Munch, Morning, oil on canvas, 1884

Edvard Munch, Evening, oil on canvas. 1888

Edvard Munch, Summer Night, Inger on the beach, oil on canvas, 1889

Edvard Munch, Night in Saint-Cloud, oil on canvas, 1890

Edvard Munch, Melancholy, oil on canvas, 1892

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Cigarette, oil on canvas, 1895 

Edvard Munch, Train Smoke, oil on canvas, 1900

Edvard Munch, Summer Night by the Beach, 1902

Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, oil on canvas, 1907

Edvard Munch, Varlandskap (Spring Landscape), oil on canvas, c. 1923