Shop art print and framed art Anxiety by Edvard Munch

Anxiety is an expressionist painting produced by Edvard Munch in 1894. It is kept in the Munch Museum in Oslo. The landscape in the background is the Oslo fjord as seen from Ekeberg, the same as in The Scream, the first version of which was painted the previous year. The pale, ghostly faces advance towards the viewer like a procession of spectres, reminiscent of Evening on Karl Johan Avenue. The image repeats the setting from Le Cri: a railing cuts the image space diagonally, with lines plunging from the top left to the bottom right; a steep precipice gives a glimpse of a town and a fjord in the distance, traversed by boats; and finally, a sky tinged blood-red with storm-tossed cloud formations. On the gangway or bridge is a group of people with pale greenish faces and wide-set eyes, staring straight at the viewer and seemingly rushing towards him. In the foreground, three figures in particular stand out: a woman wearing a hat in the shape of a bonnet or halo, a man wearing a top hat and another man wearing a hat and pointed beard. The artist sought to depict emotions such as disaffection and sadness. In this way, Anxiety is part of the series of around twenty paintings that Munch called The Frieze of Life, in which he sought to depict anxiety and the bleak, mechanised life of modern man. With this search for emotion, Munch moved symbolism towards what would later be called expressionism. According to Gerd Woll, the reference colours and chromatic contrasts have an alarming [...]

 

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

 

« Anxiety » is kept at Munch-museet, Oslo, Norway.

 

Find the full description of Anxiety by Edvard Munch on Wikipedia.