15. june – 29. september 2019
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday 12–17
Munchmuseum on the move -Kunsthall Oslo
Dronning Eufemias gate 34
Edvard Munch og Käthe Kollwitz
Edvard Munch (1863–1944) and Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) lived parallel artistic lives. They were born within a few years of each other and died only months apart, and both were among the most significant artists of their era.Tragic events early in life also marked their work; Munch lost both his mother and sister at a young age, while Kollwitz also experienced the loss of three older siblings. Her youngest son Peter died in World War I at the age of 18.
Munch and Kollwitz share an intensity, a concern with darkness, with grief, pain and loss. At the same time, they took markedly different approaches to aesthetics, to politics, to life. Munch is individualistic, concerned with existential questions and the psyche; Kollwitz was a socialist and a pacifist, and her art seeks the universal in the particular, offering archetypes of suffering and injustice.
Though Kollwitz was celebrated for her draughtsmanship and Munch for his oil painting, both artists are also considered masters of the craft of printing. This exhibition brings together lithographs, etchings and woodcuts that span the full range of both artists’ working lives and presents some of both artists’ best-known images. It also attempts offer a deeper and more complex picture of their shared themes and the connections between them, offering moments when each appears to work from the other’s perspective. Munch used lithography extensively and innovatively; Kollwitz was renowned for her ability to coax a depth and range of tone from her prints that made them as powerful as her original drawings.
This is the first major presentation of Käthe Kollwitz in Oslo since the Munch Museum’s 1974 exhibition, made possible through collaboration with the Kollwitz Museum in Cologne. The exhibition is a part of the programme Munchmuseum on the move – Kunsthall Oslo, based on the collection of Rolf E. Stenersen, which is part of the Museum. Stenersen was advised by Munch to buy two works by Kollwitz, which are now part of the collection.
Photo: Edvard Munch, Kiss IV, 1902. credit: Munchmuseum