Most of Munch's creations are now in museums, and the exhibits in Shanghai come from the private Gundersen collection in Norway.
Munch started to experiment with printmaking in 1895 when he was 32 years old. For the next 49 years until his death at Ekely in 1944, print was the constant medium of his creation. Munch not only wielded his brush with ease as a master oil painter but also captured and depicted the "soul" in the monotonous black-and-white world of prints, according to Ma.
The Scream, for example, was a lithograph print hand-colored by Munch himself. To date, only two copies of these hand-colored prints of The Scream have survived. The other belongs to the collection of the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway.
The exhibition features five sections showcasing 47 prints and five oil paintings by Munch. Aside from The Scream, the exhibition showcases three different versions of his best-known print, The Sick Child, and one of his best portrait prints, The Brooch (Eva Mudocci).
These works were created over a span of nearly 30 years starting from 1895, the start of the most productive and colorful period of his career, which witnessed his transformation from, as Munch himself described, "a cursed, restless soul that was forced to wander and would never find peace" to a man who finally settled down in his hometown of Oslo.
If you go
10 am-6 pm (last entry before 5:30 pm), Monday-Sunday, Sept 25-Jan 3,2021. Jiushi Art Museum, 6F, 27 Zhongshan No 1 Road East, Huangpu district, Shanghai.
