1892-1896
Berlin: Experiments and Emergent Signs of Modern Art

In his Berlin period, Munch frequented a wine pub, “Zum schwarzen Ferkel” (The Black Piglet), where intellectuals and writers, including August Strindberg, congregated. His art began to reflect a profound concern with suffering, love, pain and death, continuing the subjects of the early Kristiania works of the mid-1880s. Around 1893, with Melancholy, Death in the Sickroom, Moonlight, Puberty and Vampire, he created major works whose themes would preoccupy him throughout his career and subsequently be brought together in The Frieze of Life. His subject matter, long influenced by French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, now evoked the existential anxieties, loneliness and pain, beneath the surface of civilized life.