Art News

Pompidou exhibition throws new light on the work of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch

PARIS.- Edvard Munch was entirely “modern”: such is the argument of this exhibition of almost 140 of his works. Including some 60 paintings, 30 works on paper and 50 vintage photographs, as well as a number of films and one of the artist’s very rare sculptures, “Edvard Munch, l’œil moderne” throws new light on the work of this celebrated Norwegian painter (1863-1944) by showing how his interest in all the forms of representation of his time nourished his inspiration and profoundly shaped his art. His experience of photography and film, his reading of the illustrated press and his work in the theatre all fed into his work, endowing it with the utter modernity that this exhibition seeks to reveal. Contrary to the received opinion that sees in Munch a nineteenth-century artist, tormented and reclusive, the exhibition shows that he was aware of the aesthetic debates of his time, engaged in a constant dialogue