Two Women on the Shore
1898
Edvard Munch Norwegian, 1863-1944
Norway
The themes of loneliness, sex, and death are given powerful expression in Edvard Munch's color woodcut Two Women on the Shore. A young girl, clad in white, gazes yearningly across the dark sea toward an unknown future. She seems oblivious to the deathlike figure beside her which she is fated to become. Incorporating the rough texture of the woodblock and limiting himself to basic shapes and a few colors, the Norwegian artist created a disturbing image of the fruitlessness of love and hope.
Woodcut printed from one block (sawn into three sections) in dark blue, green, black and red-brown ink with additions in green crayon on cream Japanese paper