Love, jealousy, loneliness, angst, and death - fundamental experi-ences of human life - are described with penetrating immediacy in the works of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944), many of which have become icons of modern art. Munch's images of the crisis of the individual qualify him as a representative of a modern consciousness, the form in which he articulates this inner human drama as a pioneer and founding father of expressionism. He re-turned to the themes of such paintings as The Scream, Melancholy,Jealousy, and The Voice over and over again throughout his lifetime,reinterpreting them in myriad variations in paintings, lithographs,and woodcuts. Twenty-three of these subjects were selected as the basis for this unprecedented investigation into the complex inter-relationships and diverse possibilities that underlie Munch's ex-periments with content, motif, and form.

Presenting 70 paintings and 135 works on paper, accompanied by a collection of new essays by recognized Munch scholars, this book explores the origins, development, and interdependence of theme and variation in Munch's oeuvre.