Lot 308 D α

This woodcut is simultaneously strikingly large and reserved; with the motif of the lonely ones, it presents a topos from Edvard Munch's repertoire dealing with the world of human feelings.
With the woodblock divided into three parts, Munch realised the scene in different colour variations and also with slight formal differences in eight states (see Woll 157 I-VIII). The outlines of the figures, beach and edge of the sea remain constant. In the version offered here, the eye is not distracted by the sometimes bold colour combinations of yellow, red, pink, green and blue, and concentrates instead on what is happening. Not at all like a woodcut, but instead finely nuanced in its formal as well as chromatic composition, a spectrum ranging between chasm and approach is expressed solely through the gestures of the protagonists seen from behind, thus providing viewers with room to form their own interpretations and identifications. Tenderly, sensitively depicted, the woman stands alone, quietly absorbed, before the union of heavens and sea merged together in infinity. The male figure draws towards her with hesitant steps - uncertain whether something will happen and what it will be. A painting with the theme of “Two People” or “The Lonely Ones” had already existed since 1891, but that work is now lost (see Arne Eggum 1980/1981, op. cit., p. 139 with illus.). As an assignment from the director Max Reinhardt, Munch created a frieze for the hall of the Berliner Kammerspiele 1906/1907, in which he reworked the motif in a stereotype manner. (see comparative illus.; cf. Woll, Paintings 725-736).
"The frieze is intended as a series of decorative pictures that, as a group, are supposed to convey an impression of life. The wavy shore lines wind through it and the sea extends across it, always in motion, while life in all its aspects of pleasure and pain, is lived out underneath the trees." (Edvard Munch, cited after Jutta Held, Museum Folkwang Essen. Katalog der Gemälde des 19. Jahrhunderts, Essen² 1981, p. 21).