Two of Scandinavia’s most renowned artists, Norway’s Edvard Munch and Denmark’s Asger Jorn, will be celebrated at a major exhibition in what will be one of the highlights of the Aarhus 2017 European Capital of Culture programme. The exhibition at Museum Jorn in nearby Silkeborg runs from 11 February-28 May. It will feature 45 works by Munch and more than 60 by his Danish counterpart.
The exhibition highlights the extent to which Jorn was influenced by Munch, whose best known work is The Scream, as well as the inspiration that both took from the beauty of Scandinavia’s landscapes. It also highlights a sense of kinship between the artists in how they explored love, sex, beauty, death and grief in spectacular paintings and evocative woodcuts. In all their works, there is a common thread of intensity, vitality and creative zest.
Jorn (1914-1973) discovered Munch (1863-1944) shortly after World War II, when he crossed the border into Norway illegally to experience a memorial exhibition of Munch’s works at the National Gallery in Oslo. He saw Munch’s late works for the first time – an experience that he never forgot and which changed the way he painted. While Jorn never adopted Munch’s methods and motifs, he used them to develop his own artistic idiom.
As well as works from the Munch Museum and Museum Jorn, the exhibition also features paintings loaned from other galleries and private art collections.
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