Munch and Kirchner: Anxiety and Expression

Join Freyda Spira, the Gallery’s Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings, for an introduction to Munch and Kirchner: Anxiety and Expression. Featuring more than 60 works on paper, this exhibition is the first to examine the prints of Edvard Munch alongside those of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, elucidating the fascinating overlaps in their creative output and personal biographies and demonstrating how these artists suffered from—and attempted to cope with—the anxieties of their age. Drawing primarily on a large group of prints in the collection of Nelson Blitz, Jr., and Catherine Woodard, as well as the Gallery’s own substantial holdings of German Expressionist works on paper and other U.S. museum collections, this exhibition brings into focus the parallels between these two towering figures of Expressionism, highlighting their engagement with themes of anxiety, modernity, psychology and psychiatry, depression, and trauma. Exhibition and publication made possible by the Robert Lehman, B.A. 1913, Endowment Fund. Organized by Freyda Spira, the Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings, with the assistance of Joseph Henry, the Florence B. Selden Fellow, Department of Prints and Drawings.