.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Munch's Madonna is among the most haunting and evocative depictions of womanhood in the history of European art. Originally conceived in Berlin between 1893 and 1894, the work stands at the crossroads between the symbolist art of the late 19th century and the modernism of the early 20th century. The print, first created in 1895, was the culmination of a series of five painted versions executed by Munch between 1893 and 1895. Just as Munch did not date these paintings, they have also been ascribed various titles, and two versions were originally presented as part of a series called Die Liebe ('Love') with the title Liebendes Weib ('Woman making Love'). One of the first written references to the series came from Munch's friend and critic, Stanislaw Przybyszewski, who described one of the paintings exhibited in 1894 as '...a robed Madonna lies on a crumpled sheet, with the halo of the future martyrdom of birth...the mystery of eternal procreation fills the woman's face with a radiant ecstasy' (quoted in: W. Timm, The Graphic Art of Edvard Munch, Greenwich, 1969, p. 53). That same year 'Madonna' would gain currency as the title of this series of works. Munch's intent was to represent 'Woman' from the point of view of her lover at the moment she conceives a new life within; Munch described that precise moment as being when 'life and death join hands', when 'Woman' stands at the gateway between life and death, as the artist saw it, and reaches her apotheosis, being at her most desirable, most majestic and most fearful. In Munch's own words: 'The interval when the whole world stopped in its course - Your face holds all the beauty of the kingdom of earth - Your lips, crimson as the ripening fruit, part as in pain - The smile of a corpse - Now life shakes the hand of death - The chain is forged which binds the thousand generations that are dead to the thousand generations yet to come' (quoted in: A. Eggum, Edvard Munch: Paintings, Sketches, and Studies, Oslo, 1984, p. 116). While the artist's attitude towards women - torn between attraction, deification and fear - and his association of sex with death are deeply rooted in the 19th century, yet his visual language is astonishingly daring and modern, from the aureole surrounding the naked body to the decorative 'sperm border' and the strange and deeply disturbing homunculus in the lower left corner.
Edvard Munch was arguably a greater printmaker than painter, as the print medium forced him to condense his ideas and motifs into concise and powerful forms, and Madonna is a masterpiece of his graphic oeuvre. As with other of his most important prints, he experimented over the course of several decades to perfect his vision. Therefore, many variations of Madonna exist, ranging from including and excluding the border, cropping the figure at the waist, handcolouring the image or printing from several stones in colour, and using a large variety of papers.
The present sheet is one of the very first monochromatic impressions, printed in 1895. Gustav Schiefler in his very first catalogue raisonné of Munch's prints, published in 1906, distinguished two states of this print: the first with many lighter areas, especially on the woman's right arm and around the head and figure of the embryo; the second with the areas reworked and darkened. According to Woll however, who acknowledged this change in her catalogue of 2001, these variations are not the result of additional work to the stone but simply the result of the stone 'filling in' and losing definition as it was repeatedly printed and distinguishes between early and later impressions. We follow Gerd Woll in her assessment, noting practically all impressions belong to the latter variant, while the present one is undoubtedly very early, as Kornfeld already stated in the sale catalogue of 1993, when it last came to the market. The transparency and highly nuanced
articulation of the lines and surfaces, together with the thin paper used for this impression, add to the ethereal quality of the image. Of the examples we could compare, only one hand-coloured impression in the Munchmuseet (inv. no. 194-36) seems equally clear and early as the present one.
It was only in 1902-1903 that Munch began to explore printing methods to apply color to the image. Eventually, Munch's pictorial and technical acumen would make him one of the most acclaimed and influential printmakers of the Modern era. Impressions of Madonna exhibited at the Armory Show in New York in 1913 were priced at US$ 200, placing them among the most valuable and sought-after prints of the early 20th century, a status which this powerful image retains even today, a more than a hundred years later.
Edvard Munch was arguably a greater printmaker than painter, as the print medium forced him to condense his ideas and motifs into concise and powerful forms, and Madonna is a masterpiece of his graphic oeuvre. As with other of his most important prints, he experimented over the course of several decades to perfect his vision. Therefore, many variations of Madonna exist, ranging from including and excluding the border, cropping the figure at the waist, handcolouring the image or printing from several stones in colour, and using a large variety of papers.
The present sheet is one of the very first monochromatic impressions, printed in 1895. Gustav Schiefler in his very first catalogue raisonné of Munch's prints, published in 1906, distinguished two states of this print: the first with many lighter areas, especially on the woman's right arm and around the head and figure of the embryo; the second with the areas reworked and darkened. According to Woll however, who acknowledged this change in her catalogue of 2001, these variations are not the result of additional work to the stone but simply the result of the stone 'filling in' and losing definition as it was repeatedly printed and distinguishes between early and later impressions. We follow Gerd Woll in her assessment, noting practically all impressions belong to the latter variant, while the present one is undoubtedly very early, as Kornfeld already stated in the sale catalogue of 1993, when it last came to the market. The transparency and highly nuanced
articulation of the lines and surfaces, together with the thin paper used for this impression, add to the ethereal quality of the image. Of the examples we could compare, only one hand-coloured impression in the Munchmuseet (inv. no. 194-36) seems equally clear and early as the present one.
It was only in 1902-1903 that Munch began to explore printing methods to apply color to the image. Eventually, Munch's pictorial and technical acumen would make him one of the most acclaimed and influential printmakers of the Modern era. Impressions of Madonna exhibited at the Armory Show in New York in 1913 were priced at US$ 200, placing them among the most valuable and sought-after prints of the early 20th century, a status which this powerful image retains even today, a more than a hundred years later.