The city where the art of genius Edvard Munch lives

As a new exhibition celebrating the portraits of Edvard Munch opens at the National Portrait Gallery in London, journalist Laura Hall travels to the artist's hometown in Norway. It's striking how Munch's work, much of it over 100 years old, is still relevant today: from his ability to paint emotional landscapes with a particular focus on mental health, to his belief that there was no separation between humanity and nature.

Laura Hall/The Guardian

I arrived at Ekeberg Park at sunset and walked along the muddy paths to find a good vantage point. The winter sky is like a watercolor painting: soft blue and gray clouds lie one on top of the other, with a broad yellow slope running over the distant hills. From this vantage point, I look out over Oslo and wait to hear a scream.

In 1892, Edvard Munch took a walk in this same park as the sun was setting. Recording the experience in his diary, he wrote that he heard “a great, endless cry in nature.” This experience became the basis for his most enduring painting. No one knows whether the cry was real—there was a hospital nearby—or imagined. Today, all I hear are the joyful cries of children playing on the hill among the joggers and walkers, who pass through the leafy paths of the park.

As the National Portrait Gallery mounts a new exhibition of Munch’s portraits, I’m following in the artist’s footsteps in Oslo. Munch is unavoidable here: at the Clarion Oslo Hotel where I’m staying, a version of Andy Warhol’s “The Scream” adorns the lobby — the pop artist was a big Munch fan — and a photograph of Marina Abramović greets me during breakfast.

The city’s main attraction is easily visible. While the shapes of the islands and the borders of the Oslofjord are identifiable and the same, like those in the background of the painting “The Scream,” the Munch Museum stands out among the new modern buildings on the Bjørvika waterfront. The upper part of the building is curved, the architects say, to appear to bow to the city of Oslo, the inspiration for many of Munch’s works. Inside, my tour guide, Sid, takes me on a tour of the museum’s extensive collection.

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"Munch was unique in the way he captured changes in generations and perceptions. He was documenting humanity at a time when faith and institutions were collapsing," says Sid.

I am amazed by how Munch's works, most of them over 100 years old, are still relevant today: from his ability to paint emotional landscapes with a particular focus on mental health, to his belief that there was no separation between humanity and nature.

In the gallery, three different versions of “The Scream” are exhibited in rotation, dimly lit to preserve their colors. One has water damage in the lower left corner: this is one of the paintings that was stolen by daring art thieves in a daylight robbery in 2004. At the National Museum, another version of “The Scream” is on display for visitors and is watched with extra care by two security guards. Another version of the painting was stolen from this gallery in 1994, when police attention was focused elsewhere during the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. It was missing for only 12 weeks.

Other highlights of the Munch Museum include a large room displaying sketches of Aulas’ paintings, a series of large works that Munch made for the ceremonial hall of the University of Oslo. They depict an abstract sun shattered into colorful rays, a nursing mother on a rocky shore, and a fisherman teaching a young boy to fish, and are considered his greatest works. When the Nazis occupied Norway, these paintings were hidden in a mine. Munch’s work was included in the Nazis’ list of degenerate art – modern and avant-garde art was considered depraved at the time. Any deviation from the standard norms was condemned. After the war, these monumental works were restored and placed in their place of honor, in the university hall, which is open to the public one Saturday each month from February to May.

The next day, I took a trip to Ramme, where Munch painted two of these works. A 30-minute train ride and a short taxi ride from Oslo, it’s a veritable paradise for fans of the artist. You can walk around the house, his outdoor studio, and along the beach. There’s something about the sound of the sea, the rocky shoreline on the Oslofjord, and the surrounding apple trees that offer a great sense of tranquility. For Munch, plagued by ill health and mental problems throughout his life, this was the idea. He bought the white house here in 1910, which, oddly enough, is rented out to vacationers during the summer, and kept it until his death in 1944. Inside, the carefully restored bright yellow walls and white lace curtains served as the backdrop for many of his portraits. I walked through apple trees to a rocky shore strewn with shells, where interpretive signs show his paintings, set against the landscape.
After returning to Oslo, I took a walk through the lively neighborhood of Grünerløkka. Munch’s family lived in several different buildings in this area, marked with plaques, and it was in one of these that he placed one of his most emotional paintings, “The Sick Child,” inspired by the death of his sister from tuberculosis.

All the colors of life are found in this city. I feel like I could walk past the subject of one of my favorite Munch paintings, “Madonna,” which depicts a woman with raven hair and a red beret. Before I leave, I pay my respects at his grave. I wonder what he might have created if he were alive today. According to a cicerone named Linda, his love of self-portraits means only one thing: “He would be the king of selfies.”

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What awaits visitors at the "Edvard Munch Portraits" exhibition?

London, March 22 (“Country & Town House) – Edvard Munch's most famous painting is undoubtedly "The Scream" (1893), which has become one of the most iconic and well-known works of world art. Associated with the work, dominated by the colors of black and orange, as well as the tortured face of the central figure, are years of anxiety and torment, as well as existential fear in the face of illness and loss. 
While none of the four delicate versions of “The Scream” made it into the Edvard Munch Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, many other works are. The exhibition, curated by Alison Smith, includes works that have never before been seen in the UK, such as Munch’s portraits of lawyer Thor Lütken and physicist Felix Auerbach.
“Throughout his life, Munch sought to penetrate the masks of those he portrayed in his paintings, using expressive colors to reveal inner feelings and motivations,” says Smith. “This exhibition offers a unique opportunity to appreciate his work as a portraitist, both in his personal connection to those he portrayed and how he portrayed them.” 

“We are thrilled to present this exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery to shed new light on Munch’s deep social connections, and to bring together portraits that have never before been seen in the UK,” said Rosie Broadley, co-director of the National Portrait Gallery’s curatorial programme. “I would like to thank Alison Smith and other colleagues at the gallery for their hard work on this exhibition, the major lenders for their collaboration, and our supporters the AKO Foundation, Viking and Asbjorn Lunde Foundations.”
More than 40 works are on display in “Edvard Munch Portraits,” covering the artist’s entire life in four parts: his early life with his immediate family, his time spent among bohemian radicals, his work for patrons and art collectors, and finally paintings created to portray his closest friends in his later years, whom Munch referred to as his “saviors.”

We begin in the 1880s and 1890s, when as a young man Munch (born 1863) created intimate images of his family, often on small pieces of cardboard. The style is more naturalistic than the artist would later become known for – but the main concepts that are evident in his later works can be traced even now. “Evening” (1888) shows Munch’s sister Laura on a family holiday, just a year before she was eventually hospitalized with schizophrenia. In the mid-1880s, Munch left his country home and moved to Oslo to study art formally, joining an internationally connected bohemian network of artists and writers, mainly led by the anarchist Hans Jæger. Munch’s portrait of Jæger, painted in 1889, dominates this section of the exhibition, and his art developed thanks to interactions with artistic circles in Paris and Berlin. This is the beginning of what he called “soul art”: that distinctive style that expresses love, anxiety, fear, jealousy, betrayal and more deeply felt emotions. In 1894, the monograph “Das Werk des Edvard Munch” by the Polish writer and playwright, Stanisław Przybyszewski, promoted the Norwegian artist internationally.

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By the early 1908th century, Munch was one of the most highly exhibited artists in Europe, attracting prominent patrons and art collectors. He began to receive commissions, painting his portraits in bold colors to reflect the dynamics of his subjects. But by 1909, Munch was under extreme stress; he collapsed and was admitted to a mental institution in Copenhagen, where he painted the doctor, Dr. Daniel Jacobson, enveloped in a rainbow of rippling colors. By 13, the artist was in good health and returned to his homeland, with the help of a group of friends, whom the artist referred to as his “saviors” or “caretakers.” These men are the exhibition’s final subjects, including full-length portraits of Jappe Nilssen, the painter Ludvig Karsten, and the writer Christian Gierløff. Munch loved them so much that their portraits served as substitutes when the real people couldn't be there for him. The exhibition, titled "Edvard Munch Portraits," is open at the National Portrait Gallery in London from March 5 to June XNUMX.