The Lonely Ones - Edvard Munch

This black and white print is executed in drypoint, a technique that allows for soft strokes and surface effects. Munch's fine use of this technique and the halftones, ranging from dazzling white to blurred darkness, as well as the intimate format and tight cropping of the subject, reinforce the tense calm of this love motif.

Munch began working with printmaking in Berlin in the fall of 1894, and the plates for Two Human Beings are among the first he created. This print is one of eight that comprised a portfolio published by the art historian Julius Meier-Graefe in 1895. The National Museum's copy is dated 1896. It is not certain that it can be attributed to that year. In any case, this small, expressive print vividly illustrates that Munch was a masterful graphic artist from the start. The print repeats (in mirror image) the motif of a painting Munch had worked on in the 1890s. This painting has since been lost, although we know it from a photograph. Munch later used the motif in color woodcuts (1899 and 1917).