Edvard Munch: Graphic Works from the Gundersen Collection

Lithographs and woodcuts, landscapes and eyes

As he became increasingly renowned, printmaking proved a successful way for Edvard Munch to disseminate his work. Moreover, repeated iterations provided an opportunity to alter the mood and dynamics of each print. Changing the ink and paper colours for example, or the absorbency of the paper, shifts the focus and intensity. There are many examples in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art's well-presented exhibition (running till September) where multiple iterations are displayed side by side. Rather than diluting the work, the vivid differences focus us more intently on the image.

The rippling anguish of Munch does not always appeal to me completely. However, new aspects were revealed in this collection, more so than by any admittedly casual glance I have given his work before. The exhibition highlights the key theme of landscape, and how Munch's wandering figures are affected by their surroundings. Loneliness pervades, as the landscape seems to either envelop or emanate from the desolate subjects. There are expanses of water, foreboding forests and swirling skies. Munch had heard a scream "coursing through nature", he said of the experience which led him to paint The Scream.

A rare print of that ubiquitous image is here, and the background landscape is repeated in the nearby Anxiety (shown in two versions). Nature screams indeed. From these prints, the figures stare intensely, hollow-eyed. The piercing eyes in Munch's work strike us throughout – take the masterly self-portrait, or Woman with Red Hair and Green Eyes. They are either weary and sunken or frighteningly desperate. Again, the variety inherent in the printmaking process subtly changes these emotive characteristics within the same image.



The exhibition, taken almost entirely from a private Norwegian collection, focuses on the short period 1895–1902, and so the style is generally unvaried. The lonely figures and the swirls are repeated from room to room. Whilst it might be even more enlightening to see the original paintings on which some of the prints were based, there is enough to engage to the end. Certain pieces stand out, including The Sick Child and the powerful Two Human Beings. Meanwhile, I was drawn to the more stylized forms of woodcuts Kiss IV and Head by Head, striking and vibrant. Nature encroaches still, through the heavy-grained texture, but here perhaps there could be deliverance from the anguish.