The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is one of the most significant modernist painters. His career in art lasted six decades from his debut in 1880 until his death. He boldly experimented with painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and pioneered Expressionist art from the early 1900s.
Edvard Munch was born on 12.12.1863 on a farm 140 kilometers north of Christiania, as Oslo was then called. By the time of his birth, his parents, who were married in 1861, already had a daughter, Sophie. The boy was born frail and seemed so weak that he had to be baptized at home. However, he lived to be 80 years old, became a great Norwegian expressionist painter, while his family members faced a more dramatic fate.
Biography and works of Edvard Munch
In 1864, Edward's family moved to Christiania. In 1868, his mother Laura died of tuberculosis, leaving five children in the arms of her grief-stricken husband. Mother's sister Karen Bjölstad came to the rescue. She was a self-taught artist, from her a little nephew and took over the love of painting.
In 1877, tuberculosis takes another victim from the Munk family. Sophie, Edward's beloved older sister, dies. After a short time, signs of schizophrenia appear in Laura's younger sister. Later, in his dramatic works, he conveys the emotions that possessed an impressionable child from what was happening. Memories of illness and then the death of his mother and sister never gave him rest.
In 1779, Edvard Munch entered the Technical College. This study brings him the understanding that painting is his life's work. He resolutely leaves college and enters the Royal School of Art and Design.
His father, a military doctor Christian Munch, who, after the death of his wife, overstepped himself into religion, was wary of the choice of his son. Having become too fearful of God, he worried about the temptations that his son was about to face in the arts.
In 1882, together with six colleagues, Edward rented a studio for painting. The realist painter Christian Krogh becomes the mentor of young artists. His influence was further reflected in the work of Munch.
During 1883, Edvard Munch exhibited his works for the first time at the exhibition, and his painting "Morning" attracts positive reviews.
In March 1884 the artist received a Schaffer scholarship, and in 1885 he went abroad for the first time. There he participates in the World Exhibition in Antwerp with a portrait of his younger sister Inger.
In 1886 Munch continued to exhibit his work at exhibitions. One of the main paintings in his life "Sick Girl" causes a scandalous reaction. Viewers perceive the canvas as a sketch for a painting, and not as a finished work. The plot of the canvas was inspired by Munch's constant memories of the death of Sophie's older sister. At the time of her illness and extinction, Edward was only 15 years old. He remembered her pale face, thin trembling hands, almost transparent skin, and therefore with strokes that seemed incomplete to the audience, he wanted to display an almost ghostly image of a dying girl.
In the spring of 1889, Munch organized his first personal, and generally the first solo exhibition in Christiania. He is only 26 years old. The creative luggage accumulated by this time allowed him to exhibit 63 paintings and 46 drawings in the Student Society.
In November, Munch's father dies of a stroke. Edward was in Paris at that time and could not make it to his funeral. The departure of his father for the artist, deeply impressionable from early childhood, was a terrible shock. He is overwhelmed by depression. Later, his sad work "Night at Saint-Cloud" was born. In the image of a lonely man who sits in a dark room and peers into the blue of the night outside the window, the researchers see Edward himself or his recently deceased father.
Since the early 1890s, for thirty years, Edvard Munch has been working on the cycle Frieze of Life: A Poem of Love, Life and Death. In the paintings, he displays the main stages of human existence and the associated existential experiences: love, pain, anxiety, jealousy and death.
In 1890, Munch showed his works at several exhibitions. He again, for the third year in a row, receives a state grant and visits Europe. In Le Havre, Munch falls seriously ill with rheumatic fever and is hospitalized. In December, five of his paintings are destroyed in a fire.
The year 1891 was marked by the fact that the National Gallery acquires for the first time his work "Night in Nice".
In the summer of 1892, Munch holds a large exhibition in the Parliament building in Christiania. Norwegian landscape painter Adelstin Normann liked Munch's works, and he invites him to exhibit in Berlin. But the capital of Germany greeted Munch's works with such an unfriendly attitude that the exhibition had to be closed a week after the opening. The artist settles in Berlin and joins the underground world.
Munch lives in Berlin, but regularly visits Paris and Christiania, where he usually spends the whole summer. In December 1895, Edvard Munch was overtaken by another loss - his younger brother Andreas dies of pneumonia.
In the same 1985, the artist painted the first version of his most striking and famous painting "The Scream".
In total, Munch wrote four versions of The Scream. This is not the only work, versions of which he repeated many times. Perhaps the desire to reproduce the same plot several times was caused by the manic-depressive psychosis from which the artist suffered. But it could also be the creator's search for the most perfect image that thoroughly conveys his emotions.
There are several versions of Munch's painting on the theme "The Kiss".
Relationships with women and Edvard Munch's illness
Edvard Munch had a very attractive appearance, some called him the most handsome man in Norway. But with women, his relationship either did not work out, or was complicated and confusing.
In 1885, Munch falls in love with a married woman, Millie Thaulov. The novel lasts several years and ends with a breakup and the artist's love experiences.
In 1898, Edvard Munch meets Tulla (Matilda) Larsen, with whom a stormy romance lasted for the next four years. Munch wrote about her:
In the summer of 1902, he received a gunshot wound to his left arm during a conflict with his mistress, who unsuccessfully tried to become Munch's wife. Edward finally breaks up with Tulla Larson. His state of mind becomes more and more unbalanced. As always, the artist subsequently displays any of his strong feelings in his works.
He spends most of his time in Germany and regularly exhibits. Gradually, Edvard Munch became a recognized but controversial artist. In 1902 he exhibited 22 paintings from his cycle "Frieze of Life", on which he constantly works. The painting "Madonna" is one of Munch's works in this series. A close friend of the artist Dagni Yul (Kjell) served as a model for one of the versions of the painting.
In 1903, Munch began an affair with the English violinist Eva Mudocchi. Their love relationship does not develop due to nervous breakdowns, scandalousness, suspicion, inadequacy of Munch. In addition, he suffers from alcoholism.
As a child, Edward had terrible dreams that were born in an impressionable boy under the influence of the frenzied moral teachings of an overly religious father. Munch was haunted all his life by images of a sad dying mother and sister. He had a tendency to acutely experience any event. In 1908, there was a breakdown, and in a state of mental disorder he was sent to the private psychiatric clinic of Dr. Jacobson.
The last years of the life of Edvard Munch
In 1916, on the outskirts of Christiania, Edvard Munch bought the Eckeli estate, which he loved and made his permanent residence until the end of his life.
In 1918, the artist caught the Spanish flu, which raged in Europe for a year and a half in 1918-1919."Spanish flu" claimed, according to various estimates, 50-100 million people. But Edvard Munch, who was in poor health from birth, survives.
In 1926, sister Laura dies, whose schizophrenia was discovered in childhood. In 1931, Aunt Karen leaves this world.
In 1930, the artist developed an eye disease, due to which he almost cannot write. However, at this time he makes several photographic self-portraits and draws sketches, albeit with distorted forms - in the form in which he began to see objects.
In 1940, Fascist Germany occupied Norway. At first, the attitude towards Munch was acceptable, but then he is included in the list of artists of "degenerate art", which includes, for example, his Dutch colleague Pete Mondrean.
In this regard, his last four years, Edvard Munch lived as if under the sword of Damocles, fearing the confiscation of his own paintings.
He died at the Eckeli estate on January 23, 1944, at the age of 81.
He left all his works to the municipality of Oslo (Christiania until 1925): about 1150 paintings, 17800 prints, 4500 watercolors, drawings and 13 sculptures, as well as literary notes.
