Pierre Wat – författare

An authoritative new publication that revisits Munch’s work in its entirety. Edvard Munch occupies a pivotal place in artistic modernity. His work is permeated by a singular vision of the world, with a powerful symbolist dimension that goes beyond the masterpieces he created in the 1890s, and which gives his art a great coherence. For Munch, humanity and nature were united in the cycle of life, death and rebirth, which is reflected in the unending recurrence of certain motifs and colour combinations in his work. He wrote: ‘These paintings, which are, admittedly, relatively difficult to understand, will be […] easier to grasp if they are integrated into a whole.’ Published to accompany the major exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Edvard Munch: A Poem of Life, Love and Death presents about a hundred works – paintings, drawings, prints and engraved blocks – reflecting the diversity of Munch’s practice. Seven essays explore the artist in his philosophical and scientific milieu and the places that shaped the man and his art, as well as offering a rare glimpse of Munch’s attempts at creative writing. They also examine the historical evolution of his monumental Frieze of Life series and the world-famous Scream. This publication invites readers to revisit the painter’s work in its entirety by following the thread of an ever-inventive pictorial thinking: a vision that is both fundamentally coherent, even obsessive, and at the same time constantly renewed.

This catalogue is the first comprehensive presentation of the life and work of the artist couple Anna-Eva Bergman and Hans Hartung, who were linked by common interests such as nature, the cosmos, and music. Bergman, who was of Swedish-Norwegian origin, was a pioneering abstract artist who was inspired by landscapes and natural forms. Hartung, born in Germany, was instrumental in the development of gestural abstraction in Europe. The two biographies are traced on the basis of drawings, paintings, archive documents and photographs: from their first meeting in the 1920s, through many years of separation, to their reunion in 1952 and their deaths in the 1980s.