Mar 05, 2015 - Sale 2375

Sale 2375 - Lot 432

Price Realized: $ 7,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 8,000
EDVARD MUNCH
Omega's død.

Lithograph on Japan paper, 1908-09. 307x530 mm; 12x20 7/8 inches, full margins. Edition of approximately 20 on Japan paper, from a total edition of approximately 80-90. Signed in pencil, lower right. Printed by Dansk Reproduktionsanstalt, Copenhagen. From Alpha and Omega. A very good, dark impression of this extremely scarce lithograph.

Munch produced this lithographic series while he was undergoing psychiatric treatment in Copenhagen in 1908-09. He had created several preliminary drawings of similar subjects and themes in the mid 1890s and, after exhibiting a number of them in 1903, decided that he would use the works as a basis for a series of prints. The lithographs represent Munch's interpretation of the first two humans--Alpha and Omega (based on Adam and Eve). The process of designing and illustrating his own creation myth proved to be crucially therapeutic for Munch.

This important lithographic series, coupled with the 8 months of professional therapy he received at the time, helped to stabilize Munch. During the last part of his career, from the 1910s onward, Munch's work became more colorful and less pessimistic. He spent most of his last two decades in solitude at his estate in Ekely, at Skøyen, Oslo. Schiefler 326; Woll 356.