This autumn Bergen will be the world’s “Munch-capital”. The exhibition “Edvard Munch. There are Worlds Within Us” is a rare meeting of four of the largest Munch collections in the world.

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is the artist behind some of the world’s most famous pictures. He is considered one of the first and greatest exponents of expressionism, a direction that emphasised the expression of our inner states.

Friday 6 September KODE launches two major exhibitions on Munch.

The exhibition “Edvard Munch. There are Worlds Within Us” is a rare meeting of four of the largest Munch collections in the world. The exhibition displays near 100 paintings and works on paper on loan from the Munch Museum, the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, and the Gundersen Collection as well as works from KODE's own Munch-collection.

A parallel exhibition, “The Experimental Self. Edvard Munch’s photography” will be presented in KODE Rasmus Meyer Colleciton. This exhibition looks at Munch’s exploration of photography and film as an artistic medium. The two exhibitions presents a golden opportunity to explore the breadth of Munch’s artistic oeuvre – from paintings and prints to photography.

"Nothing is small nothing is great – there are Worlds within us. Small things form part of the large. Large things form part of the small – A drop of blood is a Universe with Suns at its centre and Planet. The ocean is a drop. A small part of a Body." Edvard Munch, undated note

The exhibition “Edvard Munch. There are Worlds Within Us” presents a broad selection of paintings and prints in the recently renovated halls of the KODE Museum’s Stenersen building, KODE 2.

In all his art, Munch explored connections within life and nature – the great in the small, the small in the great. One of the main themes of the exhibition is the tensions between our inner world of emotional and mental states and the framework provided by the outer world.

Another major theme is Munch’s preoccupation with phases and cycles. In the quote above, Munch gives poetic expression to a view of the universe that sees circularity and eternal cycles on every level of existence. Similarly, each individual work that Munch created is closely embedded in his broader production. It represents an inconclusive statement in an ongoing exploration of themes.