Edvard Munch. A Poem of Life, Love and Death

Edvard Munch's work occupies a pivotal place in artistic modernity. It has its roots in the 19th century and would find its place firmly in the next one. Munch's singular creative process led him to produce many variations of the same motif, but also several versions of the same subject. Eminently symbolist, the notion of cycles played a key role in Munch's thought and art. For Munch, humanity and nature are united in the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Within this framework, he developed a new iconography, largely inspired by the vitalist philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson. Munch himself pointed this out when talking about his Frieze of Life: “these paintings, admittedly relatively difficult to understand, will be [...] easier to apprehend if they are integrated into a whole.”

Edvard Munch. A Poem of Life, Love and Death presents about a hundred works, paintings, but also drawings, prints or even engraved blocks, reflecting the diversity of his practice. This large-scale presentation, with a retrospective dimension, will cover the entire career of the artist. It will invite visitors to revisit the Norwegian painter's work in its entirety by following the thread of an ever-inventive pictorial thinking: a work that is both fundamentally coherent, even obsessive, and at the same time constantly renewed. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Munch Museum in Olso.