Edvard Munch. A Poem of Life, Love and Death
Sep 20, 2022 - Jan 22, 2023
Edvard Munch Soirée sur l’avenue Karl Johan, 1892 Dag Fosse / Dag Fosse / KODE
In collaboration with the Munch Museum in Oslo, the Musée d’Orsay is devoting an exhibition to the famous Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944), whose work, in all its breadth – sixty years of creation – and complexity, remains partly unknown.
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. Moreover, his entire work is permeated by a singular vision of the world, giving it a powerful symbolist dimension that is not limited to the few masterpieces he created in the 1890s. Moving beyond fin-de-siècle symbolism, Munch transcended this movement beyond its peak to make it the backbone of his work, giving it its great coherence.
The exhibition presents about a hundred works, paintings, but also drawings, prints or engraved blocks, reflecting the diversity of Munch’s practice. It invites 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.