English Hardcover edition. ISBN: 9788415113737
Hardcover with sleeve. Stamping on front cover and spine.
This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Edvard Munch: Archetypes bringing together a selection of eighty works that examined the painter’s long and prolific career and revealed his ability to synthesize the obsessions of modern humanity. The art of Edvard Munch (1863–1944) – today considered one of the forefathers of modern art, along with Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin – developed from a distinctive blend of tradition and experimentation. From the beginnings of his career, the Norwegian artist created a particular mythology for modern times that was in close step with the art, literature and thought of his contemporaries. His personal aesthetic language, which evolved from Symbolism to Expressionism, deployed various artistic strategies to construct a pictorial narrative of the most universal of subjects, life, love and death. The interplay of fl at and sinuous forms, the symbolic use of color, the expressive deformation of the body and the use of experimental textures and techniques in printing were basic elements of his artistic vocabulary.
The book reviews a wide spectrum of emotional archetypes through which Munch reveals various existential obsessions such as love, desire, jealousy, angst and death, and states of mind including melancholy, passion and submission. The catalogue is structured around these archetypes, laid bare in the representation of the human figure in various settings: the seaside, the sickroom, the “green room,” the woods, the night and the artist’s studio. It combines early works with late versions and paintings with graphic works so as to underscore the thematic and existential circularity of Munch’s oeuvre.
Texts by Paloma Alarcó, Chief Curator of Modern Painting at Museo Thyssen-Bornenisza; Patricia G. Berman, Theodora L. and Stanley H. Feldberg Professor of Art at Wellesley College Chair; and Jon-Ove Steihaug, Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Munch Museum in Oslo. Chronology by Clara Marcellán.
