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Edvard Munch

Born: Løten, Hedmark, 12 December 1863
Died: Oslo, 3 January 1944
Nationality: Norwegian

Background:

impoverished fundamentalist Christian family - father a doctor, mother and sister died of tuberculosis (1868, 1877 respectively)

Studies:

Drawing Academy, Christiania (1881); with Christian Krohg; at Frits Thaulow’s Open Air Academy in Modum

Career:

1880s – affiliated with anti-bourgeois cultural circle, Christiania Bohème, led by Hans Jaeger

1886 – The Sick Child is exhibited at Christiania Fall Exhibition

1889 – one-man exhibition at Christiania student association; awarded government scholarship to study drawing with Léon Bonnat in Paris

1892 – moves to Berlin; government closes his exhibition, organized by Association of Berlin Artists after one week; the Free Association of Berlin Artists organizes Munch show in protest; associates with Julius Meier-Graefe, editor of Pan, August Strindberg and Stanislaw Przybyszewski

1895 – Meier-Graefe publishes portfolio of Munch’s drypoint prints

1896 – begins producing color lithographs and woodcuts

1899-1900 – stay at sanatorium of Kornhaug, Gudbrandsdalen

1902 – exhibits cycle of paintings Love or The Frieze of Life at Berlin Secession

1908 – enters Dr Daniel Jacobsen’s sanatorium, Copenhagen

1909 – publication of lithograph series Alpha and Omega ; wins commission for wall paintings in University of Christiana aula

1912 – paintings presented as precursor to Expressionism at Sonderbund of Düsseldorf exhibition in Cologne

1915 – publication of print portfolio The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

1920s – member of the art academies of Prussia and Bavaria