Edvard Munch: Theme and Variation

Loneliness, jealousy, love, and death. There is hardly another artist who explored the basic experiences of human life and his own personal angst so forcefully and in such unsettling images as the Norwegian painter and graphic artist Edvard Munch. Munch's depictions of the crisis of the individual positioned his work as representative of modern consciousness, and the form he used to express this inner drama set him as a precursor and founder of expressionism. Munch's entire creative period is characterized by a continuous return to his central, melancholic motif of the human condition. In essays by well-known authors in the field, this volume provides a unique, complex, and expansive analysis of the emergence, development, and inner fabric of theme and variation in Munch's oeuvre. Different versions and renditions of paintings like The Scream, Melancholy, and Jealousy are presented side by side for a renewed view of these icons of modernism. Additionally, the book examines the close relationship between the artist's graphic and painterly works, acknowledging that Munch's interest in motif was not limited to painting, but that it translated meaningfully into printed media such as lithographs, etchings, and woodcuts, all documented in this book.

Edvard Munch was born in 1863 in Norway. He studied art under Christian Krohg, a Norwegian naturalistic painter. Munch's parents, a brother, and a sister died while he was still young, events that partly explain his preoccupations, in his work, with the darker aspects of life. Munch traveled to Paris in 1885, and his work began to show the influence of French painters--first the impressionists, then the post-impressionists--as well as art nouveau design. His circle of friends included several writers, one of whom was the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Munch designed the sets for several of Ibsen's plays. Between 1892 and 1908, Munch spent much of his time in Paris and Berlin, where he became known for his prints--etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts. After 1910 Munch returned to Norway, where he lived and painted until his death in 1944.