Edvard Munch Prints

Munch was Norway's greatest artist and one of the founders of the Expressionist movement. He first made a name for himself as a painter and although he started making prints only after the sensation of his 1892 Berlin exhibition, his graphic work was itself an important influence on twentieth-century art. Munch was inspired by the cycles of etchings by the German artist Max Klinger to create graphic versions of his own innovative psychological imagery, working first in a style related to Symbolism and Art Nouveau to produce both etchings and lithographs. In 1896 in Paris, influenced by Vallotton and Gauguin, he made his first woodcuts. Woodcut provided a relatively simple technique that was ideally suited to Munch's imagery, in which mood, and therefore colour too, were essential. Prints became an important part of the artist's output and they were exhibited throughout Europe in his lifetime. Out of a total of 748 prints, the majority are etchings and lithographs, but Munch's enduring influence came through colour woodcuts such as The Kiss, Melancholy and The Girls on the Bridge. These powerful and important prints inspired a new fascination for woodcut among German Expressionist artists, and are among the finest prints of the twentieth century.

This book accompanies an exhibition of Munch's greatest prints at the Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow and the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, selected from the unrivalled holdings of the Munch Museum, Oslo. Essays by Peter Black, print curator at the Hunterian Art Gallery, and Magne Bruteig, senior curator of the Munch Museum, provide a general introduction to Munch's prints, illustrating masterpieces in the major techniques used by the artist.

Art historian Magne Bruteig (1948-) was educated at the University of Oslo. He is senior curator of prints and drawings at the Munch Museum, and author of Munch Drawings (2004). He also contributed to the seminal exhibition Munch Becoming Munch (2009).

Peter Black (1960-) is curator of prints at the Hunterian Art Gallery. He studied at Oxford and has written widely on prints and drawings. His publications include The Prints of Stanley William Hayter: A Complete Catalogue (1992), and he has curated numerous print exhibitions, ranging from Parmigianino (2008) to Whistler and Nineteenth-century Printmaking (2003).