Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth

Nov 18, 2023 – Apr 1, 2024

Edvard Munch's art is known for its vivid depictions of deeply human feelings. However, his fascination with nature plays an equally important role in his art and was being addressed for the first time in an exhibition. Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth investigated the meaning of such images in Munch’s oeuvre, questioning common assumptions and examining the contemporaneous artistic, scientific, and philosophical influences that contributed to his understanding of nature.

While Edvard Munch viewed nature as a cyclically self-renewing power, he also saw it as a mirror of human emotions. His interest in the psychological dimensions of existence, however, was matched by an equally strong fascination with nature. Employing his unique sensibility and power of imagination, Munch explored motifs taken from nature, seeking to fathom humanity’s place in the cosmic cycle of life. Munch developed a pantheistic understanding of nature, which he projected onto the forests and coasts of Norway. With motifs ranging from undulating coastlines and fairytale forests to snow-covered or stormy landscapes, luxuriant gardens, and the exuberant play of sun, air, and water, Munch’s work also resonated with the present-day climate crisis against the backdrop of current natural catastrophes.

#MunchBarberini

Private Collection

Edvard Munch: Summer Night by the Beach, 1902/03

In Edvard Munch's time, the understanding of nature changed radically. Under the impact of new discoveries in biology, physics, medicine and geology, nature was no longer perceived as something static and tangible, but as something dynamic that is constantly in motion. People developed an awareness of processes that are invisible to the naked eye - be they slow changes of great magnitude such as continental drift and the evolution of species, or the teeming of bacteria visible only under a microscope. The boundaries between humans and animals, between plants and minerals, shifted, blurred and were partly abolished.

Munchmuseet, Oslo

Edvard Munch: The Yellow Log, 1912

Private Collection

Edvard Munch: Stormy Landscape, 1902-03

In many works Edvard Munch put this lively, dynamic and changing nature into the picture. Thunderstorms, human interventions in nature are just as pictorial themes as moving earth masses with humanized features. Intertwined bodies unite with the earth. In some pictures Munch let man and woman float weightlessly through space. In a text he described this subject thus: "The fates of men are like the planets; they meet in space, only to disappear again at once." In this way, the artist related man's drives and desires to cyclical, universal forces.

Private Collection

Edvard Munch: The Girls on the Bridge, 1902

The exhibition brought together more than 110 loans from institutions including the Munchmuseet, Oslo, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.

Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth was co-organized by the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts; the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, Germany; and Munchmuseet, Oslo, Norway.

Munchmuseet, Oslo

Edvard Munch: The Sun, 1910-13

For the duration of the exhibition, the Museum Barberini extended its opening hours: From Wednesday to Sunday, the museum is already opened from 9 am.

From September 15, 2023 to January 22, 2024, the Berlinische Galerie presented the exhibition Edvard Munch. Magic of the North. Both exhibitions were under the joint patronage of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and His Majesty King Harald V of Norway.

View of the exhibition

Show 3 more works

"Very impressive ... one of the best exhibitions I have seen in recent years"

MDR Kultur

"A show that can be seen as groundbreaking and exhilarating ... all of this has never been put together as vividly as in the Museum Barberini ... a sensation"

NZZ

"The striking thing is the realization that Munch doesn't actually paint landscapes at all. But rather: Weather. Climates. Meteorological moods. So: not so much the trees or bodies of water, but the winds that pass over them, the warmth of the sun or the cold shadows. The sensorium for these forces is new and spectacular in its concentration ... you should have seen it."

"When you have a picture like The Scream in front of your eyes, you also know Munch's approach to the landscape. The people he paints undulate, sway and tremble with the landscape. They stem from one and the same energy. Munch's understanding was: man works and nature works back. The exhibition, with over 100 paintings, woodcuts and color lithographs from collections in Oslo, Paris, Texas and Berlin, brings this out well."

Tagesspiegel

"Nature anticipates the catastrophe: At Potsdam's Museum Barberini, we immerse ourselves in Edvard Munch's 'Lebenslandschaft'. The current explosiveness almost takes your breath away."

Berliner Zeitung

"There is a very light Munch to be discovered ... a facet that has not been seen before."

rbbkultur

"The exhibition at Potsdam's Museum Barberini shows that Munch's view of nature is also worth seeing. More than 100 works are on display."

rbb inforadio

„Munch's enchanting landscapes“

art

"The intensive exhibition focuses on the echo of nature in Munch's works, on the echo, the vibration, the trembling of the elements. Munch chooses the space between sea and land, between house and garden, between forest and meadow as his sounding board"

Deutschlandfunk Kultur

"The Barberini is showing more than 110 works by the Norwegian Munch, which tremble with fear and vibrate with color - an adventure both sensually and intellectually, Freud's psychoanalysis is painted here."

MAZ

"Puts the painter in a completely new light"

Faz

"For Jill Lloyd, who masterfully curated the exhibition in Potsdam, the combination of figure and landscape is a key to Munch's radical self-understanding as an artist"

Deutschlandfunk

"The Museum Barberini invites you to discover a different side of the painter"

Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

"Munch's unknown side ... "Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth" shows the artist as a portraitist of nature - with a keen sense of its fragility"

Berliner Morgenpost

"A fascinating look at the work of Edvard Munch."

B.Z.

"The exhibition places Munch's nature in a variety of intellectual-historical and ecological contexts"

Welt am Sonntag

"The opulent exhibition at the Museum Barberini looks at the disturbing, irresistible "landscape of life" of the Norwegian visionary Edvard Munch"

Frankfurter Rundschau

"Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth" represents another highlight in the young history of this museum run by Ortrud Westheider ... An exhibition as wonderful as it is highly topical.

Münchner Merkur

"Munch, the wizard from the North who transformed angst into art"

El País

Reading, Hearing, Viewing