impoverished fundamentalist Christian family - father a doctor, mother and sister died of tuberculosis (1868, 1877 respectively)
Drawing Academy, Christiania (1881); with Christian Krohg; at Frits Thaulow’s Open Air Academy in Modum
1880s – affiliated with anti-bourgeois cultural circle, Christiania Bohème, led by Hans Jaeger
1886 – The Sick Child is exhibited at Christiania Fall Exhibition
1889 – one-man exhibition at Christiania student association; awarded government scholarship to study drawing with Léon Bonnat in Paris
1892 – moves to Berlin; government closes his exhibition, organized by Association of Berlin Artists after one week; the Free Association of Berlin Artists organizes Munch show in protest; associates with Julius Meier-Graefe, editor of Pan, August Strindberg and Stanislaw Przybyszewski
1895 – Meier-Graefe publishes portfolio of Munch’s drypoint prints
1896 – begins producing color lithographs and woodcuts
1899-1900 – stay at sanatorium of Kornhaug, Gudbrandsdalen
1902 – exhibits cycle of paintings Love or The Frieze of Life at Berlin Secession
1908 – enters Dr Daniel Jacobsen’s sanatorium, Copenhagen
1909 – publication of lithograph series Alpha and Omega ; wins commission for wall paintings in University of Christiana aula
1912 – paintings presented as precursor to Expressionism at Sonderbund of Düsseldorf exhibition in Cologne
1915 – publication of print portfolio The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
1920s – member of the art academies of Prussia and Bavaria
Paris (1889-92); Berlin (1892-1907)
Eberhard von Bodenhausen; Wather Rathenau; Harry Count Kessler; Max Reinhardt
Maite van Dijk summaries the assessment of Munch by French critics in the 1890s:
“A recurring eleent among French critics on Munch is the specific interest in his technique. Munch experimented with an abundant variety of paints and pigments and with the application of his materials. He sprayed and splashed the paint on the canvas, scraped and scratched the paint layers, and exposed his works to extreme weather conditions, even placing them outside in the snow. Many critics had difficulties with Munch’s process. Camille Mauclair spoke about ‘paintings with no drawing and barbaric colors, with such daunting heaviness and dissonance…which we call a lack of talent in proper French.’ Even critics who endorsed his art were brought to their wit’s end by his experimental techniques and brushwork. Yvanhoé Rambosson objected Munch’s approach to painting a ‘too direct method, too material.’ Remarkably, even though Rambosson stated that Munch had developed a highly personal style full of temperament, he did not appreciate the artists’s technique. He found his use of color and line ‘physically unpleasant.’”
Maite van Dijk, “International Artists at the Salon des Indépendents in Paris: The Case of Edvard Munch (1896 and 1897), Foreign Artists and Communities in Modern Paris, 1870-1914. Strangers in Paradise, Karen L. Carter and Susan Waller, eds. (Surrey, UK-Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2015), 47.
Clarke, Jay Anne. Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, and Myth. Exhibition catalogue. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009
Heller, Reinhold. Munch: His Life and Work. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984
Heller, Reinhold. The Scream. New York: Viking Press, 1973
Munch, Edvard. Edvard Munch: the Modern Life of the Soul. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2006
p>Munch, Edvard. The Private Journals of Edvard Munch: We are Flames which Pour out of the Earth. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005Prideaux, Sue. Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005
Woll, Gerd. Edvard Munch: Complete Paintings, Catalogue Raisonné. London: Thames and Hudson, 2009