Edvard Munch
Bildnis des Malers Karl Johannes Andreas Adam Dørnberger, 1889

Alfred Flechtheim and Edvard Munch

The Norwegion artist Edvard Munch is known today for his symbolic landscapes and expressive depictions of 'angst' and melancholy. Following his early years in Christiania (Oslo) where he was very much impressed by Christian Krogh’s naturalistic style, Munch became influenced by the Late Impressionist and Symbolist painters in France. Fuelled by experience he had gained from within his own family, he repeatedly tried to come to terms with the subjects of illness and death in his painting and graphic works. Munch became well known in Germany through is first solo exhibition in Berlin in 1892 which caused a scandal and led to the founding of the Berlin Secession by Max Liebermann and other progressive artists. Munch enjoyed considerable acclaim at the latest following the Sonderbund exhibition in 1912 in Cologne, where he was the only living artist apart from Picasso with a room devoted entirely to his own 32 works, resulting in his being canonised as a Modernist artist. Despite this, he continuously suffered personal and creative crises. In 1916 he withdrew to an estate near Christiana where, with interruptions, he lived until his death in 1944.

Although Munch sold works through gallery owners such as Paul Cassirer, Isreal Ber Neumann, Fritz Gurlitt, Hugo Perls and Alfred Flechtheim, he did not have any regular or exclusive contracts with German art dealers from 1907 onwards. Flechtheim had several works by Munch in his collection but did not have any binding contract with the artist. He exhibited Munch’s works for the first time in 1914 in his gallery in Düsseldorf, together with Ernst Barlach. After that, his works could be seen regularly in group exhibitions at Flechtheim’s galleries, but he was not given a solo exhibition until 1931. The attempt by Joseph Goebbels to instrumentalise Munch as a ‘Nordic-Germanic’ artist did not prevent Munch from being labelled ‘degenerate’. In 1937, 82 of Munch’s works were confiscated from private collections and museums in Germany without his works actually being included in the ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition itself.