Two Women on the Shore
Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944)
1898
- Medium
- Woodcut printed from one block (sawn into three sections) in dark blue, green, black and red-brown ink with additions in green crayon on cream Japanese paper
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 45.6 × 51.4 cm (18 × 20 1/4 in.); Sheet: 53.6 × 59.8 cm (21 1/8 × 23 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Norway
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
The themes of loneliness, sex, and death are given powerful expression in Edvard Munch's color woodcut Two Women on the Shore. A young girl, clad in white, gazes yearningly across the dark sea toward an unknown future. She seems oblivious to the deathlike figure beside her which she is fated to become. Incorporating the rough texture of the woodblock and limiting himself to basic shapes and a few colors, the Norwegian artist created a disturbing image of the fruitlessness of love and hope.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
