Together with Nova Gorica in Slovenia and Gorizia in Italy, Chemnitz is the European Capital of Culture 2025. In this context, the exhibition Edvard Munch. Angst at Kunst Sammlungen Chemnitz in Germany, which opened on August 10 and will last until November 2, offers a fresh look at a pioneer of modernism, who transformed landscape painting into a landscape of the soul, reminding us of the reduction and concentration on the essentials: life, love, and death.
The accompanying catalogue of the same name explores the role of angst in Edvard Munch‘s (1863-1944) unprecedented body of work and its enduring influence on contemporary art.
Edited by Ed. Kerstin Drechsel, Diana Kopka, Florence Thurmes, Sina Tonn: Edvard Munch: Angst. English/German catalogue, Hirmer Verlag, 2025, 336 pages with 170 illustrations, 7,5 x 10 inches, paperback with flaps. ISBN: 978-3-7774-4648-6. With contributions by B. Bandelow, D. Kopka, M. Nommsen, U. Rudolph, S. Tonn, Ø. Ustvedt. Accept cookies — we receive a commission; price unchanged — and order the bilingual German-English catalogue from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de.
The catalogue’s co-editor, Florence Thurmes, writes in her Preface that in 1905, when he was still a controversial figure of the art world, Edvard Munch spent three weeks at Villa Esche in Chemnitz, at the invitation of the discerning art collector and wealthy textile entrepreneur Herbert Eugen Esche and his wife Johanna. He painted seven portraits of the family. Munch returned as a guest in 1926, signing the guest book of the Städtische Kunstsammlung Chemnitz.
Florence Thurmes reminds readers that, between 1906 and 1929, six Munch exhibitions were held in Chemnitz and, in 1928, the Städtische Kunstsammlung acquired his painting Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones. Under pressure from the Nazi regime, the painting had to be sold in 1937. With the current exhibition, the artwork has returned to Germany for the first time since those dark years.
German psychiatrist, psychologist, psychotherapist, and anxiety disorder expert Borwin Bandelow writes in his catalog entry entitled Edvard Munch. The Anxiety of Genius that the Norwegian artist chose titles such as Anxiety, The Scream, Despair, or Melancholy, which are impressive visualisations of mental illness. According to Bandelow, few works of art can depict emotions and mental anguish as dramatically and powerfully as those by Edvard Munch, who artistically transformed his own psychological suffering and made it the central theme of his work.
Regarding one of his most famous work, The Scream (1893), Bandelow quotes Munch who described the moment that inspired him to paint this picture as an overwhelming experience of fear and existential threat: ‘I was walking along the road with two friends – when the sun went down. The Sky suddenly turned blood-red – I paused, leaned against the fence tired to death – above the blue-black fjord and city blood in flaming tongues hovered. My friends walked on and I stayed behind quaking with angst – and I felt as though a vast endless scream passed through nature.’
Bandelow notes that Munch suffered from depression, anxiety and other psychological disorders throughout his life. He considers his art is an impressive example of how pain and fear can be used as sources of creativity.
Borwin Bandelow stresses that Edvard Munch was born in 1863 into a family plagued by illness and death. His father, a military doctor, was an extremely strict and fanatically religious man who did not read children’s books to his children but only quoted from the Bible. Munch noted in his diary: ‘Father religiously pious verging on Madness – from an old Lineage – gave methe Seeds of Insanity.’
Bandelow writes that Munch’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was just five years old, and his sister Sophie succumbed to the disease a few years later. His younger sister Laura Catharina developed a psychosis that was described as schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. The latter is a combination of schizophrenia and manic-depressive disorder.
Munch noted in his dairy: ‘From Birth – the Angels of Angst – Sorrow – Death stood by my Side[,] followed me outdoors when I played – followed me under the Spring Sun – during Summer’s Splendour – They stood by my Side in the Evening whenI closed my Eyes – and threatened me withDeath Hell and eternal Damnation – And it often happened that I woke up in the Night – and stared in wild Fear out into the Room[.] Am I in Hell[?]’
Borwin Bandelow writes that Edvard Munch suffered from social anxiety and that, at the age of 45, he developed a severe and long-lasting psychosis, which led to paranoia. He would approach strangers in the street whom he believed were talking about and condemning him, insulting them and getting into fights.
These are just a few elements taken from Borwin Bandelow catalogue contribution.
In her catalogue entry, the art historian Martina Nommsen describes Edvard Munch as a man between isolation a fascination for life. She notes that the works most associated with the Norwegian artist have emotive titles, such as The Sick Child, Melancholy, The Lonely Ones, and Anxiety. His works manifest his intense fascination for human existence in all its many facets: anger, grief, fear, and loneliness, but also love, affection, and connection. She comes to the conclusion that the visualisation of the permanent fear of life in all its facets lies at the core of Munch’s work.
At the very end of her contribution, Martina Nommsen quotes the collector and critic Gustav Schiefler: ‘Munch dared to paint the inner life, to give form to the attitudes, perceptions and memories, familiar from modern psychoanalytic literature, but which were assumed could only be expressed through words. Now we can experience that brush and pencil are capable of scratching even deeper.’
This and much more, for instance a biography of Edvard Munch, an analysis of how Munch came to Chemnitz, and a closer look at his self-portraits, can be found in this notable exhibition catalogue, full of great artworks.
Edited by Ed. Kerstin Drechsel, Diana Kopka, Florence Thurmes, Sina Tonn: Edvard Munch: Angst. English/German catalogue, Hirmer Verlag, 2025, 336 pages with 170 illustrations, 7,5 x 10 inches, paperback with flaps. ISBN: 978-3-7774-4648-6. With contributions by B. Bandelow, D. Kopka, M. Nommsen, U. Rudolph, S. Tonn, Ø. Ustvedt. Accept cookies — we receive a commission; price unchanged — and order the bilingual German-English catalogue from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de.
For a better reading, quotations and partial quotations in this review of the Edvard Munch: Angst exhibition catalogue are not put between quotation marks.
Review of the Edvard Munch: Angst exhibition catalogue added on October 14, 2025 at 20:28 German time.
