New York Times. Apr. 18, 1937.
Scandinavian Artists In Stockholm
By Alma Luise Olson. Stockholm.
A very significant exhibition of
work by Edvard Munch is being held at Konstakademien, here in Stockholm. In
addition to many of the old favorites by this Norwegian artist appear several
canvases from his own studio home, Ekeby, in Oslo. There was one period when
he was the painter of death as something familiar and friendly, indeed of death
as life’s own familiar. In this collection we detect striking exuberance
and rhythm – in majestic forest trees, in the surf, in the pounding of
horses’ feet. All his years as an artist he has been thinking in terms
of a "Life Frieze" and, curiously, as he has grown older he has turned
from themes of sickness and death to the very radiance of existence, accentuated
by superb blue-green effects and by some exhilarating subjective qualities that
profoundly moves the onlooker.
Edvard Munch himself is so much the hermit and recluse, so indifferent to his
public, that perhaps American initiative is needed just now to claim this exhibition
for New York before it is sent back to museums, to Ekeby and to the many private
collectors. Taken together with his other work that is not here represented,
it becomes the sort of showing that is a landmark in modern art history.