Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth
Edvard Munch's art is known for its vivid depictions of deeply human feelings. However, an equally important role in his art is played by his fascination with nature, which is now being addressed for the first time in an exhibition. Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth is devoted to the scientific and philosophical influences on his work and opens up his oeuvre as a resonant space for today's climate crisis.
On the one hand, Edvard Munch viewed nature as a cyclically self-renewing power; on the other, he saw it as a reflection of his own inner turmoil. Munch developed a pantheistic understanding of nature, which he projected onto the forests and coasts of Norway. The dramatic weather depicted in his paintings is especially striking in light of the current climate crisis.
Private Collection
Edvard Munch, Summer Night by the Beach, 1902/03
In Edvard Munch's time, the understanding of nature changed radically. Under the impact of new discoveries in biology, physics, medicine and geology, nature was no longer perceived as something static and tangible, but as something dynamic that is constantly in motion. People developed an awareness of processes that are invisible to the naked eye - be they slow changes of great magnitude such as continental drift and the evolution of species, or the teeming of bacteria visible only under a microscope. The boundaries between humans and animals, between plants and minerals, shifted, blurred and were partly abolished.
Munchmuseet, Oslo
Edvard Munch, The Yellow Log, 1912
Private Collection
Edvard Munch, Stormy Landscape, 1902-03
In many works Edvard Munch put this lively, dynamic and changing nature into the picture. Thunderstorms, human interventions in nature are just as pictorial themes as moving earth masses with humanized features. Intertwined bodies unite with the earth. In some pictures Munch let man and woman float weightlessly through space. In a text he described this subject thus: "The fates of men are like the planets; they meet in space, only to disappear again at once." In this way, the artist related man's drives and desires to cyclical, universal forces.
Munchmuseet, Oslo
Edvard Munch, The Sun, 1910-13
The exhibition brings together more than 110 loans from institutions including the Munchmuseet, Oslo, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.
Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth is co-organized by the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, Germany; and Munchmuseet, Oslo, Norway.
From September 15, 2023 to January 22, 2024, the Berlinische Galerie will present the exhibition Edvard Munch. Magic of the North. Both exhibitions are under the joint patronage of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and His Majesty King Harald V of Norway.