Sterbezimmer
Edvard Munch1896
The Toledo Museum of Art
Toledo, United States
Munch’s predilection for images of grief and despair was due in part to his early and repeated encounters with death, experiences that were for him a constant source of creativity and inspiration. Death in the Sickroom recalls the death of his sister Sophie in 1877 when she was fifteen and he a year younger. The artist did not portray death itself, but rather its effect on those left behind, suggesting the ever-present nature of pain and loss. He evoked the subject’s desolation though the rigid poses, blank spaces, and stark contrasts of black and white. This lithograph was to be part of Munch’s never-published portfolio The Mirror, his graphic counterpart to his painted Frieze of Life.
- Title: Sterbezimmer
- Creator: Edvard Munch
- Creator Lifespan: 1863 - 1944
- Creator Nationality: Norwegian
- Creator Gender: male
- Creator Death Place: Olso, Norway
- Creator Birth Place: Løten, Norway
- Date Created: 1896
- Physical Location: Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
- Location Created: Europe, Norway
- Physical Dimensions: 15 1/4 x 21 5/8 in. (38.7 x 54.9 cm)
- Subject Keywords: interior scene; man; woman; grief; mourning; death; sickroom; chair; window; bed; Sterbezimmer
- Type: Print
- Rights: https://toledomuseum.org/collection/image-resources
- External Link: Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
- Medium: Lithograph
- Fun Fact: In 1877, when he was fourteen, Edvard Munch's fifteen-year-old sister Sophie died of tuberculosis. Nineteen years later he produced this lithograph recording the traumatic scene. It is considered by many to be his most eloquent print. The fact that Munch shows his siblings, not young as they were in 1877, but as adults, as if the death had just occurred, attests to the lasting impression that the event left on the artist. The arrangement of the family members in the death chamber, in groupings that overlap and combine, suggests a shared grief. The isolation of the group in the foreground, composed of Munch's sister Laura, seated, another sister Inger, and the artist himself, could also suggest fear. Indeed, Munch experienced a continued paranoia throughout his life that he was genetically impaired and destined to die of the same disease as his beloved sister. Munch's frequent visits to Paris beginning in 1885 brought him into contact with Symbolist art, in which artists sought to express inner psychological states through myth, allegory, or as in Munch's case, through simplified forms and haunting imagery. As Munch wrote, "nature is formed by one's state of mind." His use of atonal lithography in the stark black-and-white composition of The Death Chamber is one of the most profound statements in Symbolist art. There is an unmistakable link between the technique and the underlying emotions that the artist is experiencing.
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