MUNCH’S HOUSE

Last week, on September 20 we had the opportunity to visit the house of an icon of the modernisms art, not just in Norway, he is internationally recognized because of his painting techniques. In spite of, he spend most of his time in a small house at Asgårdstrand (in the south east of Norway). His name is Edvard Munch, and he was living around Europe between 1863 and 1944.

During the tour we could visit his house, where was exposed the brushes, palette, clothes and even the medicines he used, it was really impressive. If you go there is interesting to observe how he used to live, the distribution of the rooms in the house, which was atypical, but also the real beds, the old kitchen and some paintings and photos on the walls related with each part of the house. I was shocked because the roof was so low for me in some rooms.

Later, the guide show us the house we went inside the studio, where there are some copies from the most important paintings, which you could buy. I was observing them and some attract my attention, the ones showed in the photo, as you can see they are so dark, because they express the pain of an unrequited love and the death of his sister, two of the most difficult moments of his life.

The colours and the symbolism are very easy to understand because they are so clear and he really known how to represent every metaphor. Moreover, one characteristic thing of this author is that all his works of art have some descriptions so you can know what he was feeling and thinking while he was painting, and this makes you empathise more with the author, because you don’t need to interpret, you can just get a more complete meaning from the picture.

During the excursion we also visit some sceneries of his paintings which were the streets, port and beach near his house, and his neighbours got an important place as a main figures, especially children appear in most of the pictures. Here you can see how similar are the landscape near his house and his painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love this type of painting, in which you can see better the feelings than the landscape. In Spain we have an artist with similar style, he is also well-known around the world because a famouse painting “the Guernica”, he’s Pablo Picasso. Moreover, he also try to show the reality from another point of view, far from the typical beauty that other painters on this time try to reflect.

After all the visit, I’m more curious about Munch’s work and how he changed the way Norwegian people understand the art, because as we know, at first he had a lot of problems with his paintings, due to everyone thought they were unfinished. So if you’re as intrigued as me, I’ll encourage you to visit the Munch’s museum in Oslo and learn a bit more about this artistic genius!

Lastly, for concluding this post I give you one of his famous phrases, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the lecture, see you on the next post!

“Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye…it also includes the inner pictures of the soul” (Edvard Munch)

Marina