Paris, France — It is an exhaustive show and exhausting in its range of emotions. Vampires and the walking dead, sick beds and deathbeds, but brilliant starry nights, a flamboyant sun and brightly dressed girls on a bridge. Norwegian artist Edvard Munch captures just about every possible feeling on record in his canvases. His body of work is often lost on one single art work, The Scream, an icon, a ghastly image known throughout the world and whose celebrity was further enhanced by its dramatic thefts in 1994 and 2004. It was recovered both times. An extensive exhibition of Munch’s works is currently on show at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The exhibition entitled, Edvard Munch, a Poem of Life, Love and Death, showcases the scope of Munch’s extraordinary artistic output exploring 60 years of creation in all of its complexity. Some 100 works are being exhibited including 40 major paintings and a significant collection of drawings and colored prints. 

These works are pivotal to modern art and exude the symbolic. The artist’s personal life was a journey in and of itself. The son of a doctor he would often accompany his father on visits to the sick developing an early relationship to life and death. Death would be part of his early life, his mother, Laura Cathrine died from tuberculosis in 1868 when he was only five-years-old. His older sister Sophie would succumb to the same disease in 1880 when she was only 15-years-old.  He would live and work in Paris, where he was greatly influenced by the Impressionists,  and Berlin. 

And the artist would return to Norway in 1909, spending most of his remaining years in his native land until his death in 1944. His later works in Norway would be brighter, more colorful, cheerful, actually.  Love, anxiety and doubt would mark his paintings, dealt into the Expressionism classification,  often imparting upon them a surrealistic symbolic aura, which is why he is regarded as one of the most prominent Symbolist painters of the 20th century. He would donate the ensemble of his works to the Norwegian government. Works as piercing as his celebrated Scream. The show at the Musée d’Orsay has been organized in a unique partnership with the Munch in Oslo. The Munch is running exhibition until January 22nd. ©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette

Esplanade Valéry Giscard d’Estaing 75007 Paris Téléphone : 01 40 49 48 14 http://www.musee-orsay.fr