Madonna. Liebendes Weib. Woman Making Love. by Edvard Munch, 1863-1944

Edvard Munch, 1863-1944
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Madonna. Liebendes Weib. Woman Making Love.

Original lithograph in black ink. 1895. Signed in pencil (on the lower part of the Madonna's body). Exceptional proof printed under Munch's direction by Lassally 1895/96, omitting the lower section of the stone. (Woll records just a very few impressions in this form (version D). Extremely fine early impression with the scraper work in the hair. Very rare.
Ref: Woll - Munch Graphic Work no 39(d). Schieffler 33 b aii

Superb rich impression. On thin 'oriental-type' japan paper. Generally excellent condition; a small tear in the upper right sheet corner repaired. The sheet trimming certainly by Munch himself. Close to the borderline at the sides and top; image to sheet size: 15 5/8 x 13 7/8 ins. (395x352mm).

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?Madonna? is one of the most beautiful yet most disturbing images in Munch?s work - an icon of the art of the period. It combines the evocation of the sensual, of womanhood at its most lush, the epitome of ?Eros?, but at the same time there is a quality of mystery and perhaps of doom. Munch had been surrounded by sickness and death since his childhood. Both his mother and his sister died of tuberculosis and their femininity had always been mingled for him with their sickness and with tragedy. In ?Madonna? beneath the extraordinary, compelling and openly sensual beauty there is certainly a strong underlying suggestion of tragedy and doom.

Munch returned to the theme of ?Madonna? on a number of occasions. He exhibited an early version in oil in 1893 and another in 1894-95. He decided to use the theme in lithography in 1895 and continued to rework and refine the stone over the following six or seven years. Munch chose the title ?Madonna? for its implications of motherhood, whilst retaining a secondary title of ?Loving Woman or Woman in the Moment of Love- Woman Making Love? and it is frequently suggested that in this lithograph he wanted to express the ecstasy of the moment of conception. Indeed in some impressions the figure is surrounded by a frieze border depicting spermatozoa (something which scandalised many viewers in the 1890?s). But in this evocation of joy and of fulfillment there is also no little suggestion of destruction.

Munch never really thought of his prints in terms of uniform editions; he was constantly interested in experimenting and modifying the images to achieve differing visual effects - introducing colour, either printed from the stone or added by hand, in some impressions and also by physically altering the format of the images. The various known impressions of ?Madonna? vary widely and over the 1895 to ?98 period he also retouched various elements of the shading and scraping on the stone. Amongst these variants are versions, like the impression here, which are without the frieze-border and also have the lowest section of the body cutaway. Another such impression is in the Munch Museum, printed in red-brown ink, as against the rich black of this example. In these impressions Munch was seeking to focus the visual attention on the eroticism of the body and the ecstasy of the face within the enveloping tresses of hair. This use of the symbol of the tentacle-like hair is seen again in the woodcut ?In Man?s Brain? (see no. 12.).