In 1892, both his brother Ernst and his father died. The tragedies affected Klimt’s outlook. By 1897, he and other like-minded artists formed a group called the Secession, aiming to counter traditionalist attitudes toward art and promote their own work. Klimt was the group’s president. His art developed as a mixture of decorative and realistic styles, mostly featuring sensual women. His colorful, stylized works were interlaced with symbols along with two-dimensional, mosaic-like embellishments and lifelike features. When his unique work was first seen—in some allegorical murals for Vienna University—it was denounced as pornographic. From then on, official commissions dwindled, but Klimt remained popular with private patrons and his influence began to reverberate around Europe.
Key Works
Idylle (Idylls) 1884, HISTORICAL MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF VIENNA, AUSTRIA
Judith and Holophernes 1901, THE ÖSTERREICHISCHE GALERIE BELVEDERE, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
The Beethoven Frieze 1902, THE ÖSTERREICHISCHE GALERIE BELVEDERE, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
The Three Ages of Woman 1905, GALLERIA NAZIONALE D’ARTE MODERNA, ROME, ITALY
The Virgin 1913, NARODNI GALLERY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
MUNCH
1863–1944 • EXPRESSIONISM, SYMBOLISM
The Scream
1893 OIL, TEMPERA AND PASTEL ON CARDBOARD
91 × 73.5 CM (36 × 29 IN)
NASJONALGALLERIET, OSLO, NORWAY
Munch described his inspiration for this eerie painting: “I was walking down the road… suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood… Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish-black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature.”
Considered the greatest Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch was a painter and printmaker whose intense portrayals of psychological and emotional themes—including misery, fear, sickness, anguish and death—made him an important forerunner of German Expressionism. Influenced by Impressionism and Symbolism, Munch created his own personal art style, involving swirling lines, discordant colors and unsettling images.
The second son of five children, Munch was born in the small town of Loten, but grew up in Kristiania, the capital of Norway (now Oslo). When he was five, his mother died of tuberculosis and nine years later, his sister Sophie died of the same disease. The pain and despair Munch experienced over their deaths and his anxiety about his father’s subsequent grief-stricken, pious austerity affected his health and later emerged in his work. As he grew up he was frequently ill and experienced morbid visions and nightmares. As an adult, he suffered bouts of depression and mental illness.
By the age of 16, Munch was at Oslo Technical College, planning to become an engineer, but within 18 months he had left and enrolled at the Royal Drawing School instead. In addition, he also began taking private lessons with the Realist painter Christian Krohg (1852–1925). In 1885 he made the first of a number of visits to Paris, where he saw the work of the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Symbolists and emerging Art Nouveau designs. On his return to Norway, he painted the haunting The Sick Child (1885–6), based on his sister’s death. The painting attracted unfavorable criticism; it was considered too somber and depressing—the handling of the subject insensitive and distasteful.
Throughout the 1880s and early 1890s, Munch tried a variety of brushstroke techniques and colors as he struggled to define his style. Most of his works appeared Impressionistic, but others caused further controversy at the rawness of emotion exposed through the use of dark colors and anguished lines. Yet in 1889, he held his first one-man show and from it he received a two-year state scholarship to study in Paris under French painter Léon Bonnat (1833–1922), who had taught Toulouse-Lautrec. Munch arrived in Paris during the Exposition Universelle and discovered the work of Gauguin, van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec. From then on, he changed his palette to attempt their methods of using color to convey emotion. That year, his father died and from then on, he assumed financial responsibility for his destitute family.
For the next 16 years, Munch spent a great deal of time in Paris and Berlin, mixing with an international circle of writers, artists and critics. His output was prodigious and he became known for his prints, etchings, lithographs and woodcuts, along with paintings that were heavily imbued with Symbolism. He achieved success during his lifetime, exhibiting internationally and winning awards. His greatest legacy was in exposing his innermost fears and phobias to the wider world.
Key Works
The Sick Child 1885/86, NASJONALGALLERIET, OSLO, NORWAY
Evening on Karl Johan Street 1892, RASMUS MEYER COLLECTION, BERGEN, NORWAY
Puberty 1894, NASJONALGALLERIET, OSLO, NORWAY
Ashes 1894, NASJONALGALLERIET, OSLO, NORWAY
The Dance of Life 1899–1900, NASJONALGALLERIET, OSLO, NORWAY
KANDINSKY
1866–1944 • EXPRESSIONISM, ABSTRACTION, THE BLUE RIDER, THE BLUE FOUR, BAUHAUS
Improvisation 11
1910 OIL ON CANVAS
97.5 × 106.5 CM (38 × 42 IN)
THE RUSSIAN MUSEUM, ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA
When Kandinsky heard a lively note, he saw yellow in his mind’s eye. Soft sounds evoked greens or blues. Similarly, shapes corresponded to sounds. For instance, circles were tranquil while zigzags were harsh. He thought that painting should be like music and not have to try to represent the real world. His ideas changed the history of art.
Credited with producing the first abstract art, Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. His pioneering achievements derived from his intelligence and sensitive nature—his explorations of color and shape evolved from his synaesthesia (the capacity to see sound and hear color) and his study of Theosophy. He wrote, taught and started an art movement, ensuring that his influence spread far and wide.
Growing up to become one of the most important figures in the development of abstract art, Kandinsky was born in Moscow but spent his childhood in Odessa. In 1886 he began studying law and economics at the University of Moscow. While still a student, he was commissioned to join a group on a research expedition to Vologda in northern Russia. His later idea of working bright colors on dark backgrounds was inspired by the peasants’ painted houses he saw there. After graduating in 1892, he lectured in law and economics at the university. Three years later, after seeing a French Impressionist exhibition in Moscow, he gave up teaching and went to Munich. There he studied with Anton Azbè (1862–1905) and befriended two other Russian students, Alexei von Jawlensky (1864–1941) and Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938).
By 1900, Kandinsky was studying at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts under Franz von Stuck (1863–1928) and from 1906 to 1908 he traveled around Europe. His fascination with color symbolism and psychology had been developing since his youth and his paintings of that time featured expressive colors, showing the influence of Monet, Signac, Art Nouveau and the peasant houses he had admired in Vologda. At this point, he became fascinated with Theosophy, a philosophy based on spirituality. Drawing on this, and other interests, including ethnology, the natural sciences and music—and also using his synaesthesia—Kandinsky began to base his work on connections between vision and sound. He started naming paintings in musical terms, such as “improvisations” or “compositions.”