Madonna, c.1895

The Artist

Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944) was a Norwegian artist whose haunting paintings reflected the anguish of his own troubled life. Painting in Paris and Berlin for 20 years, Munch was inspired by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, before shifting to his deeply personal style filled with troubling scenes of illness and death. His tortured imagery was influenced by the deaths of his parents and sister before he was 25, and the commitment of his other sister to an asylum shortly thereafter. During an exhibition in Berlin, his disturbing work generated such controversy that authorities closed the show. Munch strongly believed that his suffering was integral to his art, and created a huge body of work that powerfully influenced modern graphic art.