Edvard Munch @ British Museum, London - Love and Angst

Edvard Munch: love and angst
British Museum, London
11 April – 21 July 2019

The British Museum presents a major new exhibition on the work of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944). Edvard Munch: love and angst focuses on Edvard Munch’s remarkable and experimental prints – an art form which made his name and at which he excelled throughout his life – and examines his unparalleled ability to depict raw human emotion. It is the largest exhibition of Edvard Munch’s prints in the UK for 45 years.

The exhibition is a collaboration with Norway’s Munch Museum, and includes nearly 50 prints from their collection, one of the biggest loans of prints the Oslo-based Museum has given internationally. Displayed alongside important Munch works from the British Museum collection and other loans from the UK and Europe, the 83 artworks on show will together demonstrate the artist’s skill and creativity in expressing the feelings and experiences of the human condition – from love and desire, to jealousy, loneliness, anxiety and grief.

A major highlight of the exhibition is Edvard Munch’s The Scream which is one of the most iconic images in art history. The British Museum displays a rare lithograph in black and white which Edvard Munch created following a painted version and two drawings of the image. It was this black and white print which was disseminated widely during his lifetime and made him famous. Few copies survive and this is the first time any version of The Scream are on show in the UK for a decade.

Other highlights of the exhibition include the eerie but remarkable Vampire II which is generally considered to be one of his most elaborate and technically accomplished prints; the controversial Madonna, an erotic image which features an explicit depiction of swimming sperm and a foetus and provoked outrage at the time; and Head by Head which is a stunning print representing the complex relationship between human beings. All three of these prints are displayed alongside their original matrix (the physical objects which Edvard Munch used to transfer ink onto paper) which have never been seen in the UK before. Matrices are usually lost, but Edvard Munch was determined to keep control of his. It is rare to be able to show these alongside the prints of such a famous artist.

The exhibition is also show how Edvard Munch’s artistic vision was shaped by the radical ideas expressed in art, literature, science and theatre in Europe during his lifetime. His most innovative period of printmaking, between the 1890s and the end of the First World War, coincided with a great period of societal change in Europe which Munch experienced through constant travel across the continent on the vast rail network. The exhibition pays particular attention to three European cities that had major influence on him and his printmaking – Kristiania (Oslo), Paris and Berlin. A small selection of Edvard Munch’s personal postcards and maps are used to give a flavour of Edvard Munch’s journeys.

Edvard Munch is regarded as one the greatest artists of the early 20th century, and was a pioneer of modern art. Born near Kristiania (today’s Oslo) in 1863, his childhood was plagued by family death and illness. His later life saw him lead a bohemian lifestyle and was marked by frequent tumultuous love affairs. Two key sections of the exhibition demonstrate his passion, but also his fear, of women. He was deeply influenced by contemporary ideas, thinkers and artists including Max Klinger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Henrik Ibsen and his work would go on to influence many other artists both during his lifetime and after his death in Oslo in 1944. A number of works by other artists are displayed here to highlight these links.

BRITISH MUSEUM
Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG
www.britishmuseum.org