Shop art print and framed art Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch

The Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche, or simply Friedrich Nietzsche, is a painting by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch dating from 1906. It is a portrait of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who had died six years earlier. This is why Munch had to use photographs of the subject, contrary to his usual working method. The painting was produced at the suggestion of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and was commissioned for the Swedish entrepreneur and art collector Ernest Thiel. It is now on display at the Thielska galleriet in Stockholm, which he donated. In the same year, Munch painted a second, narrower portrait of Nietzsche, which has remained in his possession and is on display at the Munch Museum in Oslo. This two-metre-high portrait depicts a larger-than-life, hip-shaped figure of Nietzsche. According to Reinhold Heller, the philosopher is in a very upright and powerful pose. Hilde M. J. Rognerud describes it as "mannered". He is wearing a waistcoat, tie and long coat, all in shades of dark blue. He is leaning on a balustrade with his right arm. In profile, he is looking at the landscape from three quarters. The shape of the hands shows a later treatment: Munch reduced the contours of the hands, initially large, with black and white paint. The diagonal of the balustrade rises steeply in perspective from the lower left corner, separating a brownish triangle. Like the steep diagonal, the yellow and red structures of the sky are reminiscent of Munch's well-known motif, [...]

 

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

 

« Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche » is kept at Musée Munch, Oslo, Norway.

 

Find the full description of Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch on Wikipedia.