Winter - Kragero by Edvard Munch

Bearing witness to a constant fascination for the poetic harshness of Nordic winters, this large urban landscape structures space with exceptional graphic boldness. The painter captures here the immobility and silence of the cold season under the sharp gaze of the complete artist Edvard Munch. This vibrant work, bearing the title of “Winter - Kragero”, transforms a view of a small snowy town into a magnificent study of contrasting shapes and geometric masses.

A huge Scots pine with a dark and robust trunk dominates the left side, its long dark green leafy branches s’élançant proudly toward a tormented sky. In the foreground, a rounded hill is entirely covered with a thick blanket of white snow with bluish reflections, scattered with dark and icy rocks. Below extends a village with many snowy roofs interlocked into each other, of which a yellow ocre house in the foreground on the right ideally structures the corner of the urban composition. The sky is heavily laden with large greyish clouds with small openings of azure blue. The diffuse light erases unnecessary details in favor of large colored masses.

The artist’s technical virtuosity is fully expressed in this contrasted treatment between the verticality of the tree and the roundness of the snowy hill. His mastery of oil painting offers a very rich textured rendering of the snow, affirming a lasting poetic realism.