I visited the Edvard Much exhibition at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein- Westfalen, Düsseldorf on 7 November 2019.
I walked around the building admiring 140 works exhibited in a series of large gallery spaces. So many beautiful colourful paintings. And what arrested me? A small tatty black and white woodblock print made in 1897.
It is so simple. So stripped. The outline of the man (right) is created by a handful of lines. To me it’s genius.
But it’s not just the simplicity. If you compare it with the different version/copy below. This downloaded image held in the Epstein Family Collection is in blue, green, and yellow-beige on wove paper.
To me, it’s completely different. Much less appealing. The additional dimension that the colours give to the image distracts me.
