New Exhibition at Auburn University Museum Explores Prints by Edvard Munch

AUBURN, AL.- The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University presents a new exhibition, Prints by Edvard Munch, on view from Feb. 5–April 30 in the Noel and Kathryn Dickinson Wadsworth Gallery.

Munch, a Norwegian artist who lived from 1863 to 1944 is world renowned for his evocative depictions of universal human emotions and experiences––love, attraction, separation and death. His widely reproduced painting, The Scream, captures in expressive brushwork the anxious psyche of modern man, overwhelmed by his perceptions of a cruel or indifferent world.

Equally adept in printmaking as in paint, Munch exploited the directness of graphic media to intensify his artistic statements. Munch frequently reworked themes he explored in prior paintings and prints, simplifying forms almost to the point of abstraction and distilling his narrative to pure symbolism. His prints are often unique impressions, as Munch altered his inking from one sheet to the next in search of varied emotive possibilities from the same matrix.

JCSM presents a selection of Munch’s graphic work, a very rare occurrence throughout this region, made possible through a generous loan of prints from a collector whose granddaughter is a student at Auburn University. Those works are augmented by prints from the Epstein Family Collection, one of the most important collections of Munch’s graphic art and a major lender to the Munch print exhibition recently on view at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Included in the JCSM exhibition are some of the artist’s most haunting images: The Kiss , The Dead Mother and Her Child and Melancholy III.

Programming related to this exhibition will include a talk by Munch scholar Patricia Gray Berman on February 24 at 4pm in the JCSM auditorium and An Evening with Munch: Auburn University Departments of Music and Theatre which features an evening of music and theatrical performance on April 21 at 5pm.

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