Shop art print and framed art Party on the Karl Johan Avenue to Oslo by Edvard Munch

Evening on Karl Johan Avenue (Aften på Karl Johan) is a painting by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, dating from 1892. It shows the crowd on Karl Johan Avenue in Kristiana (now Oslo). It was one of the first works that Munch included in his cycle The Frieze of Life (Lyvsfrisen). The painting shows Karl Johan Avenue, Kristiana's main thoroughfare, in a nocturnal setting. On the right, in the background, we see the Storting building and two imposing poplars, and on the left, a row of houses with illuminated windows. On this side of the road, a compact crowd is heading towards the viewer. Most of the men are wearing top hats and the women are wearing pale straw hats with ribbons. Their faces are inexpressive, frozen in a grimace, their eyes wide. Their phosphorus yellow or garish green complexions contrast with the reddish blue of the sky. On the right, a single black shadow passes in the opposite direction. According to Franziska Müller, the perspective of the painting creates a sense of menace. The viewer of the painting is facing the crowd coming towards him, so that he has the impression of moving towards the abyss or towards his own reflection. Anni Carlsson reads fear, horror and hostility in the faces of the crowd as they move 'head against head'. Only one person is walking against the tide. Reinhold Heller sees a "threat to the individual from the anonymous mass pressing forward", Nicolas Stang the "dead faces of the petty bourgeois". Carlsson interprets the painting as [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the modern period. It belongs to the expressionism style.

 

« Party on the Karl Johan Avenue to Oslo » is kept at Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway.

 

Find the full description of Party on the Karl Johan Avenue to Oslo by Edvard Munch on Wikipedia.