Six paintings exhibited by Edvard Munch in…
1893 CE
His intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes builds upon some of the main tenets of Symbolism.
Love's awakening is shown in Summer Night's Dream (The Voice) (1893; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), where on a summer night a girl standing among trees seems to be summoned more by an inner voice than by any sounds from a boat on the sea behind her.
In other works forming the series, Munch explores the theme of suffering caused by love, as seen in such titles as Melancholy (c. 189293; Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo).
Munch's most famous work, inspired by a hallucinatory experience in which Munch felt and heard a "scream throughout nature," depicts a panic-stricken creature, simultaneously corpselike and reminiscent of a sperm or fetus, whose contours are echoed in the swirling lines of the blood-red sky.
In this painting, entitled The Scream or The Cry (1893, Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo) anxiety is raised to a cosmic level (ultimately related to the ruminations on death and the void of meaning that are to be central to Existentialism).
Munch gives the growing rhythms of Art Nouveau a hysterical expressive force with hardly a vestige of the Impressionist description of nature.
Images
Edvard Munch, 1893, The Scream, oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 x 73 cm, National Gallery of Norway
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North Europe
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