Edvard Munch

Executed in 1898, The Kiss III sees one of Edvard Munch’s most recognizable motifs rendered with aching tenderness. Two isolated figures, stark in their inked contrast, are locked together in a desperate yet sensual embrace, their faces merged as one. Munch experimented with the motif of the kiss across mediums beginning in 1888; the woodcut printing technique used in the present work simplifies the lovers to their very essence, ensuring that the work’s psychological tension is at the forefront. Devoid of narrative context, the intertwined figures become universal, emotive symbols of yearning and romance.

Perhaps more than any other artist, Edvard Munch has articulated the tumultuous interiority of the modern man. As exemplified by The Kiss III, his works looked inward to explore themes of love and jealousy, loneliness and anxiety, sickness and death. The present work’s evocative motif is included in the artist’s seminal body of work – the compositions he called his ‘Frieze of Life’. Beginning in the 1890s, this series comprises Munch’s most powerful images, including The Scream, Vampire, Madonna, The Kiss, Angst, Melancholy and The Dance of Life. Together, they plot the psycho-emotional journey of the contemporary soul. Printmaking was Munch’s way of exploring different manifestations of these states of anguish, anxiety, and ecstasy – by altering color, line, texture, and composition, he could depict the same motif in varying levels of emotional intensity. In this manner, Munch forged the first examples of true Expressionism, which subsequently inspired some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Henri Matisse to Francis Bacon and Jasper Johns.