MUNICH.- Ketterer Kunst is selling an Edvard Munch painting in its auction on June 6. This is nothing short of sensational, as it marks the first time a painting by the great Norwegian artist is offered on the German auction market (source: Artprice.com). On the global market, paintings by Munch have fetched prices in the millions for years. The domestic market has been limited to high-quality prints by Munch, an artist known for his lifelong innovative and experimental approach. Paintings by Munch are rare, making this occasion all the more remarkable, not only for its extraordinary quality but also for its outstanding provenance.


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"I have tried to explain life and its meaning through my art." - Edvard Munch

Showcasing his works in minor exhibitions, works by the Norwegian painter caused a stir right from the start. People were baffled and thrilled. He depicted emotional torment and inner demons in a way that was both moving and disturbing, sometimes explicitly, sometimes in pictorial subtext. He was not easy to categorize. Were his works symbolic in nature? Was he one of these new expressionists? Depending on the opinion of the seismographically judgmental art world, his subjects and painterly style, palette, and composition were either unheard of or fresh and excitingly new. Caught in a life between fear, love, and melancholy.

Born into a well-to-do family in 1863, Munch's early years were overshadowed by the deaths of his mother and younger sister. Munch grappled intensely with existential themes, trying to find a valid expression for painful experiences, death, fear, and grief, but also for sexuality, love, and jealousy throughout his entire oeuvre. Melancholy pervades his life's work.

The work of the young Norwegian painter Edvard Munch struck Berlin like a meteorite in 1892.

During his training, he joined the controversial but influential circle of radical anarchists in Kristiania (the name of Oslo until 1925). After staying in Paris, he was invited to exhibit at the Berlin Art Association in 1892. People had taken notice of him. The exhibition turned out to be a fiasco. Deemed an unacceptable anarchist provocation by traditionalists and an audience steeped in a rigid, bourgeois understanding of culture, it had to be closed after a few days to prevent things from getting out of hand. Munch took this as an opportunity to settle in Berlin. He was keen to express his feelings directly on the canvas. He didn't care about conventions. Why bother with a recognized painting technique? It would only get in the way of his ideas.

After another stay in Paris, he finally returned to Norway. In the meantime, he had been working on his famous circle “Frieze of Life”, a series of motifs examining the dark side of life and love. Critics and viewers alike were fascinated with him and his art, subsuming it under the term “soul painting.”

Between 1902 and 1907, Munch lived and worked in the house of textile manufacturer Max Linde in Lübeck, painting portraits of the family and recovering from his unstable mental state and alcohol addiction, which had resulted in several hospital stays.

Throughout his life, the melancholic, at times hot-tempered Munch was unable to escape his extremely ambivalent relationship with women. The roots of his problem lay in a brusque rejection in his youth, which reached a boiling point in his jealous love affair with Tulla Larsen. The relationship ended in a bizarre shooting incident in which Munch lost the top joint of his left middle finger. A lifelong fear of rejection remained, coupled with an unbridled, unfulfilled passion that found its ultimate expression in his maxim: “Painting women knitting and men reading must come to an end. I will paint people who breathe, feel, love, and suffer.” With bold brushstrokes, he organized vivid, often disturbing scenes in which he interpreted central, mostly painful events in his life, painting colorful portraits and candid nudes.

“The Red House“ – a personal spiritual realm and symbol of his life

Numerous painting commissions take him back to Germany time and again. His work enjoyed increasing success. 1916, he bought the Ekely Estate, a former nursery near Oslo. Having reached a more peaceful state of mind after several difficult years, he settled in the countryside, setting up an outdoor studio, working without interruption, and painting for as long as the weather permitted. He revisited his emotional states and early motifs. He did not live as an artist in the traditional sense but was a man of his time, deeply concerned with the social and political issues of his day.

He painted “The Red House” in Ekely in 1926, a typical Scandinavian landscape impression with rugged slopes, a stream, a bridge, and bare trees, sparse and deserted, yet almost cheerful in its fresh colors, masterfully staged with a magic light atmosphere. Melancholy had given way to a poetic mood. The same year, Munch chose “The Red House” for his exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, a valid sign of his appreciation, and a year later for the major retrospective at the Berlin Nationalgalerie. Two decades after his legendary Berlin scandal exhibition, Munch reached the peak of his artistic recognition.

A collector's item of international renown

Immediately after the Berlin retrospective, Galerie Ernst Arnold in Dresden sold the painting to the collection of enamel manufacturer Max Glaeser in Kaiserslautern Eselsfürth. At the time, Glaeser's collection was considered a distinguished selection of Expressionist art, with “The Red House” occupying a central place in his salon. Last year, Ketterer Kunst sold Kirchner's “Tanz im Varieté” from the same collection for an excellent price (€7 million). The characteristic landscape from the Glaeser estate came into the well-known Munch collection of Sigval Bergesen Jr. in Oslo via the gallery of Wolfgang Ketterer, the father of the owner of Ketterer Kunst.

The work remained in the Bergesen family for over 60 years and is now up for sale again – boasting a fascinating history from the artist's studio to the present day.

Edvard Munch's “The Red House” (1926) is offered in the Evening Sale on June 6 in Munich.


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