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Edvard Munch: 1863-1944

December 12, 2019 By Wendy Campbell

edvard-munch-1933Born on December 12, 1863, in the village of Ådalsbruk in Løten, Norway, Edvard Munch was a symbolist painter, printmaker and draughtsman, and his work is recognized as an important precursor of the Expressionist movement.

In 1879, Munch studied engineering at Kristiania Technical College where he learned scaled and perspective drawing. He was absent much of the time however due to frequent illness. In 1881, Munch decided to become a painter and studied for one year at the Royal School of Design. Upon leaving school, Munch rented a studio with a group of colleagues in Karl Johan Street, in the centre of the city.

In these early years, Munch experimented with different styles including Naturalism and Impressionism. In 1889, he had his first solo show and the recognition he received led to a two-year state scholarship to study in Paris under French painter Léon Bonnat.

Munch was impressed by the modern European art in Paris. He was particularly influenced by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and their methods of using colour to convey emotion.

By 1892, Munch had developed his own unique form of Synthetism where colour was the symbol-laden element. In that same year, the Union of Berlin Artists invited him to exhibit at its autumn exhibition. His paintings however, created a bitter controversy (dubbed “The Munch Affair”) and the exhibition closed after only one week. The “Affair” also gave Munch a great deal of publicity and he was invited to exhibit in other parts of Germany.

Apart from spending summers in Norway, Munch lived in Germany for three years. While there, he sketched out most of the ideas for his major work The Frieze of Life, a series of paintings in which Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death, and melancholy. His best known painting, The Scream (1893) was also painted during this time.

Munch learned to make drypoints in 1894 and he printed his first colour lithographs and woodcuts in 1896. His method of woodcutting was innovative, using the structure of the wood itself, emphasizing the expressiveness of the material. His woodcuts had a significant influence on later artists, particularly the German Expressionists.

In 1896, Munch moved to Paris, where he continued to develop his woodcut techniques. Many Parisian critics still considered his work “violent and brutal” but his exhibitions were well attended and he received considerable attention.

After constant travel in France and Germany, and a dramatic romance with a Norwegian woman, Tulla Larsen, Munch entered the sanitorium of Kornhaug in Gudbrandsdalen in 1899, and stayed until 1900, to restore his nerves and physical strength.

In 1902, Munch achieved a definitive breakthrough in Berlin. The Frieze of Life was exhibited at the Berlin Secession which led to artistic recognition and financial success. His Paris Salon exhibitions in 1903 and 1904 attracted considerable attention, but his greatest success at this time was his exhibition in Prague in 1905. Also during this time, Munch received many commissions for portraits and prints which improved his financial condition.

In 1908, Munch’s physical and psychological health broke down – his excessive alcohol consumption and brawling had become severe. He entered the sanitorium of Dr. Daniel Jacobsen in Copenhagen where he received treatment for the next eight months. During this time, he continued a series of full-length portraits, arranged sales of works to Norwegian collectors, and prepared for a retrospective exhibition in Kristiania.

Munch’s loyalties were divided at the onset of WWI, as he stated, “All my friends are German but it is France that I love”. In the 1930s, his German patrons, many Jewish, lost their fortunes and some their lives during the rise of the Nazis. Munch’s art was removed from German museums and classified as “degenerate”.

By the time Germany invaded and occupied Norway in 1940, Munch was living an isolated existence on his estate in Ekely, Oslo.  Norwegian museums had also removed his paintings and prints from view. With nearly an entire collection of his art in the second floor of his house, Munch feared Nazi confiscation. Seventy-one of the paintings previously taken by the Nazis had returned to Norway through purchases by collectors.

Munch became ill after an explosion at a munitions depot near Ekely broke the windows in his house. He died on January 23, 1944.

In his will he bequeathed over 1,000 paintings, 15,400 prints, and a large number of their plates, 5,000 watercolours and drawings, and six sculptures to the Municipality of Oslo. The collection went on view to the public after the opening of the Munch-Museet in Oslo in 1963.

Edvard Munch - Self Portrait between Clock and Bed
Edvard Munch - The Scream - 1893
Edvard Munch - Evening on Karl Johan
Edvard Munch - Madonna 1894-95
Edvard Munch - The Kiss - 1897
Edvard Munch - Workers Returning Home
Edvard Munch - The Three Stages of Woman (Sphinx) - 1894
Edvard Munch - The Dance of Life
Edvard Munch - Puberty
Edvard Munch - Jealousy
Edvard Munch - Paris Nude
Edvard Munch - Death in the Sickroom
Edvard Munch - Anxiety
Edvard Munch - Ashes

Sources: MoMA, Munch Museum, Wikipedia

Filed Under: ART, Art History, Painting, Printmaking Tagged With: Edvard Munch, Norway Art, Norwegian Art, Printmaking, Symbolism, synthetism

Christopher Conte: Sculpture

January 4, 2012 By Wendy Campbell

Norway native Christopher Conte was raised and currently lives in New York. Conte has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and worked in prosthetics making artificial limbs for amputees for 16 years as a Certified Prosthetist. At the same time, he privately created biomechanical sculptures and 2008 became a full-time artist.

Conte’s sculptures combine original cast components with found and recycled parts using materials ranging from bronze to carbon fiber and often including materials from the aerospace industry and medical fields.

“While a strong connection with future technologies is present in all of Chris’ work, ancient techniques such as lost-wax bronze casting have become an integral part of the process as well. The process involved in creating just one sculpture can often take weeks or even months.”

Conte has exhibited across the United States and his work has appeared on The Discovery Channel, in Discover Magazine, Wired Magazine, MTV Networks and in Popular Science Magazine.

To see more, visit Microbotic.org.



Filed Under: ART, Sculpture Tagged With: American Art, Assemblage Art, Christopher Conte, Found Object Art, Norway Art

Simen Johan: Photography

November 11, 2011 By Wendy Campbell

Born in Kirkenes, Norway photographer and sculptor Simen Johen lived in Sweden before moving to New York in 1992 where he earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts.

Photographs from Simen Johan’s ongoing project, Until the Kingdom Comes, are on currentlty show now at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York City.  Johan’s images “depict an unsettling natural world hovering between reality, fantasy and nightmare. Johan merges traditional photographic and sculptural techniques with digital methods. Having originally photographed a variety of plants and animals in natural preserves, zoos, farms, museum dioramas or his own studio, the artist then resituates them digitally into new environments constructed from images photographed elsewhere.”

“In his work, Johan creates tension and blurs the boundaries between opposing forces, such as the familiar and the otherworldly, the natural and the artificial, the serene and the eerie. In one photograph, two black-beaked flamingos intertwine in an embrace that seems at once affectionate and restricting. In another, two hapless caribou lie glazed with ice, frozen in a scene that is both tranquil and brutal. Exploring the paradoxical nature of existence, the artist situates his images between an ideal paradise and a reality complicated by desires, fears and darker instincts.”

While some photographs in the series reference Biblical motifs, Johan says that his choice of title, Until the Kingdom Comes, “refers less to religious or natural kingdoms and more to the human fantasy that one day, in some way, life will come to a blissful resolution….In a reality where understanding is not finite and in all probability never will be, I depict ‘living’ as an emotion-fueled experience, engulfed in uncertainty, desire and illusion.”

To see more, visit SimenJohan.com or Yossi Milo Gallery.



Filed Under: ART, Digital, Photography Tagged With: American Art, Norway Art, Simen Johan, Sweden Art

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