Munch

Edward Munch (1863-1944) was the greatest artist to have come out of Scandinavia in modern times. After a youthful apprenticeship among the artists and intellectuals of Christiana in his native Norway, and after exposure to decisive innovations in Paris, his first major exhibition in Berlin in 1892 firmly established him as an original and controversial artist. His work soon came to exercise a crucial influence on the development of Expressionism, a movement that in altered forms is showing renewed vigor in Europe today.
Preoccupied throughout his long and prolific career with themes of death, love, and sex, Munch sought to give visual expression to the inner nature of man. He was unusually sensitive to emotional experiences, and his work speaks directly to our own innermost feelings.
In an introductory essay and in commentaries that accompany the forty colorplates in the book, Thomas M. Messer, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York, traces Munch's growth as an artist, placing him in the context of his times. He introduces the reader to the family scenes and familiar places that haunt Munch's art, and to the wider relationships - with writers, poets, and patrons - that nurtured Munch and sustained him in difficult times.
Munch is justly considered to be a master of the graphic arts. Here, prints and drawings are reproduced side by side with paintings, underscoring the intensity with which Munch worked out his themes and ideas in different mediums. Through all these Munch projects the psychic realities of his time through forms and images of great power.

Russian painter Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) is remembered primarily as the founder of the short-lived Suprematist movement in the 1920s. Yet his style varied quite a lot, tracing a curve from representation, followed by abstraction, and thence a return to the human figure. Similarly, Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is so associated with his icon of angst, The Scream (1893), that his later, more painterly landscapes and portraits are often forgotten. Because these artists are best known for a small part of their output, these volumes, which review their entire careers, are particularly valuable. Textual matter is whittled to a minimum. Each volume contains just a pair of two-page essays: a terse biographical sketch followed by a succinct aesthetic commentary. As a result, these thin titles cannot be thought of as a source of anything but visual information, but they serve that purpose superbly. Their signature feature is the inclusion of numerous (60-70) high-quality color plates derived from every period in each artist's life. The 15th and 16th entries, respectively, in Abrams's excellent "Great Modern Masters" series, these books are identical in format to earlier titles focusing on such artists as Bacon, Chagall, Klee, and Matisse. The visual emphasis results in affordable supplements to better sources for biocritical information, like the Biographical Dictionary of Artists (Facts on File, 1995). Though not definitive, these two unique resources are highly recommended for all collections.?Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.