Edvard Munch and the Expressionists: Anxiety & Art

Can a painting capture the terror, longing and loneliness of being human?

With The Scream, Edvard Munch created one of the most unsettling images in the history of art. But his paintings of love, jealousy, illness and death went far beyond personal confession, giving visual form to the psychological tensions of modern life. His example helped inspire a younger generation of German Expressionists, including Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and the artists of Die Brücke, who transformed crowded streets, cabarets and intimate encounters into scenes of startling intensity. Rose explores how these artists used distortion, jagged forms and unsettling colour to make the invisible world of human emotion impossible to ignore.