Description
(Text)
Loneliness, jealousy, love, death. Hardly any other artist has explored the basic experiences of human life and personal angst more forcefully and with such unsettling images as the Norwegian painter and graphic artist Edvard Munch. His depiction of the crisis of the individual makes Munch a representative of modern consciousness, and the form he uses to express this inner drama makes him a precursor and founder of Expressionism. Munch's entire creative period is characterized by a continuous return to his central motifs.On the basis of more than 70 paintings and 140 works on paper shown at the exhibition, this Albertina publication contains essays by well-known authors in the field, and for the first time provides an 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, Jealousy - all icons of Modernism - are presented side by side. Additionally, the book showsthe close relationship between the artist's graphic and painterly works, for Munch's interest in a motif was not only restrained to painting. He also transformed his themes into printed media such as lithographs, etchings and woodcuts, all impressively documented in this book.
(Author portrait)
Edvard Munch, geb. am 12. Dezember 1863 in LKlaus Albrecht Schröder studierte Kunstgeschichte in Wien; von 1988 bis 1999 Direktor des Wiener Kunstforums; seit 1996 Präsident der Interessensgemeinschaft österreichischer Museen und Ausstellungshäuser (IMA); seit 1999 Direktor der Albertina, Wien. Herausgeber und Verfasser zahlreicher Publikationen und Beiträge zur österreichischen und internationalen Kunstgeschichte, Kunstsoziologie und Ästhetik.
