Edvard Munch at NCMA

 
The great Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) created some of the most visually arresting and psychologically powerful images in the history of art. Best known in popular culture for his painting The Scream, Munch explored through paintings and prints the turbulent emotional landscapes of modern life and the anguished silence of the individual. Munch was also an experimental printmaker of astonishing daring and virtuosity. Far from being secondary to his paintings, Munch’s graphic works are among his most forceful images. This exhibition, drawn from the encyclopedic collections of the Museum of Modern Art, examines the major themes in Munch’s art as expressed in graphic media, principally lithographs and woodcuts. After a century the prints have lost none of their raw power to move us. They provoke questions—about life, death, love, sex, what it means to be human—questions that can never be answered but are still worth asking.