MOONRISE. MARLENE DUMAS & EDVARD MUNCH

MOONRISE. MARLENE DUMAS & EDVARD MUNCH
29.09.2018 - 13.01.2019

Marlene Dumas is one of the most influential painters in contemporary art. She confronts and seduces us with her expressive figurative motifs. Taking on the role of curator for the first time, she presents us with Edvard Munch’s art in dialogue with her own works.

Dumas is renowned for her visually striking paintings. She has been fascinated by Munch’s body of work for a long time. In 1981, she visited the Munch Museum and saw his series of lithographs called Alpha and Omega (1908), which opened her eyes to their similarities. “I have always said that I wish to paint love stories, and here Munch did just that, many years before me”, she says. According to her, Munch painted modern love stories – not just between men and women, but also between mankind and nature.

Munch’s Alpha and Omega and a new series by Dumas, Venus and Adonis, sets the tone for the exhibition, encompassing themes such as innocence, sexuality, loneliness, anxiety and death. Its title is borrowed from Moonrise, one of the lithographs in the series, in which Alpha and Omega are turned towards the ocean, their glances fixed on the golden glow of the column created by the moon’s reflection. Dumas associates the moonrise with something feminine and magical, yet connected to the darkness of the night. She writes the following about Edvard Munch: “Yes, he understands the night with its shadows. Yet his works are bright with light”. The atmosphere of the exhibition is coloured by the moonlight.