Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Kiss in the Field
Edvard Munch Norwegian
Not on view
One year before his death, at the age of eighty, Munch printed this woodcut from a plywood block. The subject of a couple in an intimate embrace, set against a landscape, is his final variation of the motif of the kiss that he explored throughout his life. Here, his approach is virtuosic as well as experimental. He not only accepted that the grain of the wood would show in the print but relied on its flowing and swirling lines to help shape his composition. Munch developed the scene with a bare minimum of artistic intervention. By adding only the outlines of the kissing couple and indicating a low sky over the mountains, he fashioned an image that seems to oscillate between appearance and disappearance, taking shape and being not quite there.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
