Munch's Frieze of Life
Edvard Munch called his paintings of love, fear and death the Frieze of Life and showed them together as one long cycle, The Scream among them.
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About the series
Munch painted most of these in the 1890s in Berlin and Norway. In 1902 he hung twenty-two of them together at the Berlin Secession in four groups: the awakening of love, love blossoming and fading, fear of life, and death. Death in the Sickroom, about the death of his sister Sophie when he was a boy, belongs to the last group.
He painted many of the motifs more than once, in oil, pastel and as prints, and kept the cycle going for most of his life. The Scream of 1893, with the figure on the road above the Oslofjord under a red sky, is in the National Museum in Oslo. The Dance of Life, with couples dancing by the sea on a summer night, is too.
These are strong, emotional pictures. The Scream and Madonna are upright and work alone. The Dance of Life is wide and needs space.
