A Norwegian in Vienna: Edvard Munch at the Albertina 2022
The Albertina has opened a new exhibition centered around Norwegian artist Edvard Munch entitled “Edvard Munch. In Dialogue.” Read about the new exhibition, view some sample works, and watch the virtual opening of the exhibit.
Andy Warhol: The Scream (after Munch), 1984 / Picture: © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Bildrecht, Vienna 2021 / Mikkel Dobloug Photo: Kjell S Stenmarch, Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner
The Albertina Museum in Vienna has dedicated its spring exhibition of 2022 to Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.
The new exhibition curated by Dieter Buchhart is entitled “Edvard Munch. In Dialogue” and will remain on display until June 19, 2022.
Edvard Munch. In Dialogue
More than 60 works by Munch exemplify his impressive oeuvre as one that has been groundbreaking for both modern and contemporary art.
This is demonstrated by seven important contemporary artists–all greats of the 20th century–who enter into dialogue with Munch: Georg Baselitz, Andy Warhol, Miriam Cahn, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin and Jasper Johns.
The groups of works selected by the artists themselves impressively illustrate Munch’s influence on art up to the present day. They are works that refer to Munch, were influenced by him and were created in the course of an encounter with him.
Alongside iconic versions of the Madonna and the Sick Child as well as Puberty, it is ultimately also a number of landscape paintings—bearing witness to the uncanny, the threatening, and the alienating—that place Edvard Munch’s perspective on nature, that central theme of symbolism and expressionism, in dialogue with groups of works by important artists of our own time.
Munch's influence on posterity is not only related to his melancholic worldview, rather the focus is on his experimental approach to painting and printing techniques, his unique world of color, pigment and stroke, which has shaped–and continues to shape–the history of painting.
The approaches to Munch are as diverse as the artists themselves.
They include Georg Baselitz's forest landscapes and his sometimes indirect portraits of the Norwegian painter, while Andy Warhol once again recreates icons in his own way.
Additionally, Marlene Dumas deals intensively with fundamental questions of human experience and places themes such as love, identity, racism but also death or mourning at the center of her work and thus directly follows Munch's thematic focus.
Miriam Cahn also focuses on human emotion, from powerless despair and fear to unbridled aggression.
For Peter Doig, the materiality in Munch's paintings as well as the iconology of humanity's alienation from itself is an essential point of reference in the works.
Tracey Emin's paintings and multimedia works are informed by traumatic personal experiences and tie in with the autobiographical nature of Munch's work.
This wonderful exhibition follows the Albertina Museum's record-breaking exhibitions on Munch in 2003 and 2015 and is supported by the Munch Museet and the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (Oslo), as well as numerous other international institutions and private collections.
Exhibition details
“Edvard Munch. In Dialogue” can be seen at the Albertina Museum in Vienna (Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Vienna) from February 18 to June 19, 2022.
Children under 19 are free, but adults must purchase a ticket for € 17.90.
The Albertina is open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and remains open until 9:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays.
More information and tickets can be found here.
Virtual opening: