MUNCH – serie

"Then the voice from nowhere carried on talking about Munch, like my mother of all people knew about Munch, like she knew I was looking at a picture right now, like she knew about the power crisis and the international unrest and the climate ruination in a world she’d left thirty years ago. Like she knew it all."In Ali Smith’s So in the Spruce Forest, the author’s deceased mother returns as a persistent voice, intent on sharing with her daughter insights into Edvard Munch’s intense renderings of trees and stones charged with life. Through an imaginative essayistic format, Smith weaves together probing visual analyses, personal stories and reflections on ecology and politics, linking Munch’s art to both the present moment and other realities.

What was the meaning of the extraordinary collection of texts, sketches and graphic prints that Edvard Munch called The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Get a glimpse into the artist's world of ideas through one of the greatest mysteries he left behind. In this book you can experience The Tree of Knowledge as it was found in Munch's home, with both loose, bound and blank pages. An essay by art historian Nora Ceciliedatter Nerdrum provides new perspectives on Munch's most enigmatic project. No one knows why he created this album. Was it a book proposal? Or was it an attempt to organise his ideas?What we do know is that he worked on the album for several decades, and that it was probably never completed. The most astonishing part of its content is perhaps Munch’s own texts about love, jealousy, life and death, composed in large, colourful lettering.

Edvard Munch’s pictures capture all facets of human existence. This book gathers a selection of highlights, from The Scream and Madonna to Vampire, Melancholy and The Sick Child.

Edvard Munch, the old painter, thinks he is living alone. But one day, he makes a curious discovery: he's sharing his house with a mouse called Storm, who dreams of becoming an artist, just like him. A Mouse in Munch's House is about their shared adventures in search of the perfect picture. Together they explore a hidden bar inside a piano, visit a bug exhibition under Munch's bathtub and encounter a quirky pest controller. A midnight trip to an art museum run by mice even leads to a daring art heist!Pjotr Sapegin's delightful and heart-warming tales are loosely inspired by Edvard Munch's life, and invite children to explore the magic of art, fun and friendship. Perfect for young readers aged 6 to 12 who are ready to embark on a colourful adventure with an unlikely duo: a tall, lanky artist and his tiny, furry apprentice.

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is one of the most influential figures in modern art. His career spanned more than 60 years, from his debut in the 1880s right up until his death in 1944. Munch was part of the Symbolist movement in the 1890s and was a key forerunner of the Expressionist movement that emerged at the start of the 20th century. His continually experimental approach to painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture and photography earned him a unique position in Norwegian and international art history. Munch bequeathed almost all the artworks in his possession at the time of his death to the City of Oslo. This bequest, which comprised approximately 26,500 original works, became the basis of the Munch Museum’s collection. The museum opened in 1963, one hundred years after Munch’s birth. Today the collection includes more than half of all Munch’s paintings and examples of almost all his original prints.This book contains posters of 16 paintings that were of crucial importance in Edvard Munch’s artistic career, accompanied by brief but informative texts. Iconic images such as The Scream, Madonna and The Vampire are just some of the pictures you can hang on your wall.

Georg Baselitz has been exploring, challenging and redefining contemporary art for over six decades, mainly via the medium of paint. A cornerstone of this task has been his complex exchange with historical and contemporary art. Georg Baselitz: Feet First illuminates the German artist’s relationship to the art of Edvard Munch, which he has been in artistic dialogue with since the 1960s.This richly illustrated book includes writings by exhi­bition curator Jon-Ove Steihaug, Christian Weikop, Sverre Wyller and Baselitz himself, as well as a longer conversation with the artist.

Sandra Mujinga’s work might offer an indication of the impact of the events of past and present on the future. Although disturbing, this power to ‘sess’, however speculative it might be, should be be treasured as a route to greater insight into the here and now. For every new work, standing on the shoulders of its forebears, Mujinga opens up uncharted vistas of understanding and new routes to reflection.

British Portuguese Paula Rego (1935–2022) carved out her place in international art history with a self-possessed, uncompromising expression and a burning commitment to fighting oppression and lack of freedom. She grew up in Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar’s dictatorship, which imposed strong constraints, especially on women’s freedom, and throughout her long career Rego dissected the relationship between gender, the body and power in a dark, fantastical visual language. At a time when authoritarian forces are on the rise across the world and women’s right to control their own bodies is under pressure, her images feel more relevant than ever. The exhibition Paula Rego – Dance Among Thorns presents Rego’s powerful and unsettling body of work in its full breadth. The catalogue includes all works on display and a collection of new texts by the exhibition’s curator Kari J. Brandtzæg as well as by Catarina Alfaro, Isabel Freire and Jennifer Higgie. Together, they sketch an intense and nuanced portrait of an artist who never ceased to challenge – whether aesthetically or politically.

Edvard Munch’s Freia Frieze was installed in the women’s canteen at the Freia Chocolate Factory in 1923. More than a century later, these twelve paintings are now leaving the factory to be shown at MUNCH in the exhibition Edvard Munch and the Chocolate Factory. This book sheds light on the frieze from new perspectives: Curator Ana María Bresciani puts the works into a social and art-historical context, while author Marta Breen gives voice to the factory’s many female workers. Author Per Petterson writes about his mother, who worked at Freia, and about his own encounter with Munch’s art. Chipo Dendere, an expert on African studies, looks at the historically charged cacao industry, while painting conservators Lina Wulff Flogstad and Mie Mustad provide a rare insight into the conservation work behind the exhibition. The book shows how the Freia Frieze speaks not just about its own time but about ours – about art, work and community.