It has been many years since Munch’s last exhibition in Rome, and this new “art experience” can be considered the most anticipated of the year; in fact, it is very difficult to see the Expressionist artist’s works in person unless you go to the Munch Museum in Oslo.
In addition to his best-known work, which is used every day as an emoticon, The Scream, there are many works by the Norwegian painter that are worth seeing.
The exhibition provides visitors with a journey of experiences and emotions. The first section is titled ‘Training the Eye,’ the second ‘When Bodies Meet and Separate,’ the third section ‘Ghosts,’ the fourth ‘Munch in Italy,’ the fifth ‘The Invisible Universe,’ the sixth ‘Facing the Mirror (Self-Portrait), and the seventh ‘Munch’s Legacy.
Let’s see which works struck us the most during the exhibition, besides The Scream.
Karen Bjølstad in the rocking chair
Munch’s mother died of tuberculosis when her son was five years old; then his sister Karen moved into the painter’s house to care for the woman’s five children. Aunt Karen was herself an amateur artist who encouraged and supported her nephew during his artistic career. Here Munch portrays her in front of a window practicing the depiction of a person against the light. Karen kept her grandson’s achievements, such as newspaper reviews, until her death (in the 1930s).
The Tomb of P.A. Munch in Rome (1927)
In 1927 the artist stayed in Rome for a month and wrote a letter to his aunt Karen, saying he had painted a sketch of the tomb of his uncle (a great Norwegian historian buried precisely in the capital’s Protestant cemetery). The painting may seem somber, but nonetheless it shows the serenity of death. According to Munch, the cemetery he visited was one of the most beautiful in the world.
Man’s Head in a Woman’s Hair (1896)
This has been called an unusual couple portrait, like a trap or protection. The woman’s hair connects the two figures as a form of caretaking or as a reference to the story of Salome.
Evening. Melancholy (1891)
This work is one of the first in a series of interpretations of Munch’s theme of melancholy. The painting, in fact, as we learn in the exhibition, was a turning point for the artist: a representation of emotional interiority, whose title refers to a psychological pain and not a protagonist.
Attraction II
The women’s long hair represents a poetic device for the painter and becomes the medium through which Munch expresses erotic power (hair like electric currents that are ignited). As can be seen in the lithograph, the couple’s faces are wrapped in the veil of hair. “They look like sleepwalkers drawn into intimacy by a magnetic force.” The landscape, the moon reflecting on the water with trees around it, brings to mind Åsgårdstrand, a town in Vestfold County, Norway; a landscape shared by many of the painter’s works.