The aim of this study is to analyze the symbolic image of death and anxiety in the works of Edward Munch. He served as a pioneer of expressionist painting by making abstruse human psychology expressed in his own way through his own experiences and the...
The aim of this study is to analyze the symbolic image of death and anxiety in the works of Edward Munch. He served as a pioneer of expressionist painting by making abstruse human psychology expressed in his own way through his own experiences and the theme of non-painting that had never been exposed to imagination in the situation of that age.
Munch\'works began with the tragic death of a family that took place during his childhood. Such targic death remained alive in his life-long memory and thus became the dominant factor of his works. The failure in love Munch suffered through his growth, the obsession he had on the death of man, the series of inner conflict from his mental uneasinessall of them
appear concretely in his works of art, specially in his self-portrait. The expressionless front view of his self-portraits and the person which he drew all his life shows that the visual expression of his mental state fuIl of anguish was his important theme. These individual experiences were sublimated into many works such as series of ‘The Frieze of Life.\'
The most important thing of Munch works is what is the theme. Wl1en he was in Saint Cloud in 1889, he wrote in his diary. “What I draw musl be the human being who has breath, feelings, sufferings, love, and must be alive.\' This desire of expression shows that his works are expressive and symbolical. To express his inner the world, he destroyed tbe important of the extemal forms of objects, distorted and simplified thc shapes with subjective preconception and tbus stimulated instinct with rough color and lines. Munch had overcome his sufferings by arts and tried to spread out aesthetics empathically communicating them just as they were. Ilis subjective and originative presentation of human souls made a turning point in the history of fine arts which was continued to the expressionism in Germany.