Edvard Munch - Angst/Anxiety

For several years, ARoS has been working to present a large and important Edvard Munch exhibition in Denmark. It has now succeeded.

This autumn's ARoS Classic is entitled EDVARD MUNCH - Angst/Anxiety and will include a wide range of unique Munch works in painting and graphics, including internationally recognised masterpieces such as the paintings Evening at Karl Johan, Woman in Three Stages, Melancholy and Jealousy. This is the first time the world-famous collection of Munch works from the Rasmus Meyer Collection in Bergen, the most important Munch collection outside Norway besides the Munch Museum and the National Museum in Oslo, will be shown together outside Norway. In addition to the works from the Rasmus Meyer Collection, ARoS is working to supplement important loans from other museums and private collectors around the world.

The exhibition EDVARD MUNCH - Angst/Anxiety aims to show how the concept of anxiety has been a driving force throughout Edvard Munch's art and life. In a series of thematic and partially chronological rooms, visitors can follow how anxiety has been latent in the Norwegian artist's many depictions of modern, alienated human life throughout his life: fear of life, fear of love and fear of death.

Over the years, there have been a few fantastic exhibitions of Munch's works all over the world; right now, a large selection of his art is on display at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The most recent exhibition in Aarhus was in 1975. With the exhibition EDVARD MUNCH - Angst/Anxiety, the ambition is to organise the largest exhibition of Edvard Munch's art in Denmark in 36 years.

In 2013, Edvard Munch's 150th birthday will be celebrated in Norway and around the world. ARoS sees it as natural that Denmark should also contribute to the celebration of this Nordic world artist in the months leading up to his 150th anniversary. 2013 also marks the 200th anniversary of Søren Kierkegaard's birth in Denmark. Through the exhibition's title Angst/Anxiety, Munch is related to Kierkegaard and his work "The Concept of Anxiety".