Edvard Munch

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Edvard Munch is regarded as the pioneer of the Expressionist movement in modern painting. At an early stage Munch was recognised in Germany and central Europe as one of the creators of a new and different movement of art, that helped artists to express their feelings about all the social change that was happening around them.

Munch was born in 1863, and before long he had come to know the intensity of emotional pain. His father was a doctor who often bought patients to the Munch home. His mother died when Edvard was five years old, his older sister died of disease at the age of fifteen, and Edvard himself was often ill. One of his youngest sisters was also diagnosed with a mental illness at an early age. With death and illness as a major element in his life, he felt the need to find a way of expressing this.

After a year at a Technical school to study engineering, Munch became dedicated to his artwork. He left Technical school and entered a school of design.

In 1886 he produced the painting titled The Sick Child, which was inspired by the death of his sister Sophie. Munch produced the image six times in oils and twice in prints, slowly developing the technique that gave the final, intensely textured and dark painting. People

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Most of my later works owe their existence to this picture.

An example of his changed style is the 1912 painting, 'Galloping Horse'. He never completed this project, and in 1930 he began to experience eye trouble. The paintings caused such shock that the show was shut down.

In 1893, Munch painted 'Vampire', which creates a motif of vulgarity and deception.

Munch was an extremely powerful painter in that he was able to communicate his deepest emotions and thoughts through his work.

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... middle of paper ...

... Blossoming and Dissolution of Love, Anguish of

Life, and Death. The eleven paintings - "The Kiss", "Madonna",

"Ashes", "Dance of Life", "Melancholy", "Red Virginia Creeper", "The

Scream", "Death in the Sick-Room", "Puberty", "Moonlight", and "The

Sick Child" - are as moving today as they were a hundred years ago

when the motifs were first conceived.

Munch finished "The Scream" in 1893. It was a work of great personal

meaning to him. The painting was like the culmination of all the

tragic and harrowing events in his life. When Munch was aged only five

years old, his Mother died from Tuberculosis. Nine years later, his

favourite sister Sophie dies from tuberculosis also, at the age of 15.

Frequent illnesses prevent him from attending Technical college in

Christiania (Oslo). In 1889, he is hit with perhaps the biggest blow

so far: his beloved father dies.

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