Munch and Primitivism

The word that was used to describe the works of the creative artists in the 19th century was avant garde. Immediately before this time, paintings were fairly straight forward and realistic, lacking the use of symbols, but the avant-garde artists, created works which were meant to be interpreted by the viewer. These pieces of art were not simply landscape paintings or portraits, but had symbolic meaning and structure. "As the great conflagration of 20th century expressionism burst into flame, the spark that set fire to that movement called 'primitivism' was the 19th century discovery of the primitive arts of the South sea islanders and the wood carvings of native African tribes," (Flemn, 1963: 712). This expressionist movement in art brought on a new wave of artists, including Edvard Munch.

Edvard Munch was born on December 12, 1863, in Loten, Norway. He grew up in Norway's capital, Oslo, then called Christiania. His father, Christian Munch - brother of the well-known historian P.A. Munch - was a deeply religious military doctor earning a modest income. His wife, who was 20 years his junior, died of tuberculosis when Munch was only five years old, and Munch older sister, Sophie, died of the disease at the age of 15. Munch himself was often ill. A younger sister was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age. Of the five brothers and sisters only one, Andreas, ever married, only to die a few months after the wedding. Though his childhood home was cu

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ibition in Christiania, and was thereafter awarded a state travel grant for three consecutive years. He went to Paris, where for a short time he was a pupil of Luc Bonnat, but he became more inspired the city's art life. At this time, Impressionism just began to fade out and in it's place came Expressionism. The first autumn, shortly after Munch arrived in France, he was informed that his father had died. The loneliness and depressed Munch of that time is often referred to in the painting "Night," (1890) which is thought to show his thoughts and feelings of this time in his life. The dark interior with the lonely figure at the window is completely dominated by shades of blue. At the Autumn Exhibition in Christiania in 1891 Munch showed among other works "Melancholy". Great curved lines and more dominant brush strokes are shown here; Munch wrote about this time of his life more than any time, the time when his father died. Munch also did the first sketches of his most well-known, most famous painting "The Scream" at this time. He also painted several pictures in an Impressionist style verging on pointillism, with motifs from the Seine and from Christiania's promenade. However, it is the impressions of the soul, and not the eye, t

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