a lonely artist searching for answers

norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is undoubtedly one of the most relevant artists of aesthetic modernity. His best-known work, The Scream, the first version of which was completed in 1893, along with other pictorial variants and engravings always with the same title, is one of the most intense representations of the disgust experienced by the transformations of the modern world. In one of his notes, in this case undated, Munch says that the work was born when, walking alone between the city and a fjord, he felt that the colors of the afternoon took on a red tone, like blood, which made him feel a cry of the nature: “the colors screamed”.

The excellent exhibition organized by the Musée d'Orsay allows an in-depth look at Munch's entire artistic career, in addition to that iconic work, of which only one engraving is presented here. More than 100 works were brought together: 50 relevant paintings, joined by a remarkable set of drawings and engravings. The tour is organized into eight sections plus a concise epilogue, which does not follow a chronological order.

The articulation criterion is based on the principle of the cycle, which the curators consider the central key to Munch's artistic work, and which would unfold into the concept of metabolism, according to which humanity and nature flow together in the same cycle: that of life, death and rebirth. The intention is to convey that Munch's working method would consist of thematic variation of an idea which develops differently in various works.

[From environmental activists trying to catch themselves within the framework of Munch's 'El shout' in Oslo]

This approach would have its initial expression in the series of works frieze of lifeof which it is part The Scream. Here lies one of the central aspects that this exhibition provides us with to understand and feel Munch's art in depth. Although he lived and breathed the atmosphere of the artistic avant-gardes, At all times he was a lonerartist who worked individually, outside of groups or associations.

In reality, he sought to get to the bottom of his vital experiencealways complex and difficult, with family deaths, relationship difficulties and mental problems that, due to profound nervous depression, determined his hospitalization in a clinic in Copenhagen from the autumn of 1908 to the spring of 1909.

Although he lived and breathed the atmosphere of the artistic avant-garde, he was always a loner, an artist who worked individually, outside of groups.

His passionate relationships were also intensely complex, without being able to consolidate them in any case. And here lies the root of the most questionable aspect of Munch's artistic work: the pictorial representation of woman as vampire any Assassinin which the experience of love is related to pain and suffering, but with “femme fatale” toneObviously sexist and therefore unacceptable.

In any case, Munch's strength and pictorial quality are unquestionable. From him intensely vitalistic and autobiographical approach it develops by looking within oneself to visualize and bring to life the cycles of existence. In some notes from 1907-1908, after indicating that “art is the opposite of nature”, Munch emphasizes: “A work of art can only emerge from within the human being. Art is the form that the image takes after it has passed through the human being's nerves, his heart, his brain, his eye.

This is where his central artistic concerns and motifs lie: love, anguish, existential doubt, the confrontation with death... Nothing is still in life, as they make us see the strength and expressive intensity of Munch's pictorial colors, as well as the dynamism of the figures, situations and objects in all of his works. Communication with literature and philosophical thought, and also with theater, is decisive for the tone and expressionist depth that his works convey.

Especially crucial is your relationship with theateras highlighted in one of the sections of the exhibition: we could say that Munch conceives painting as a mirror of theater, of the staging of life.

Painting makes us see, and makes us stay in life. This is, ultimately, the horizon that Edvard Munch opens up to us. On a late entry into your sketchbook (1930-1935), wrote: “We do not die, it is the world that abandons us”. Looking inward, understanding the folds of life, we remain here, even if the world ends up leaving us. And this happens with Munch's artistic work, which keep living through the passage of time.

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