Woman's Head against the Shore

Woman's Head against the Shore is a powerful print created by the celebrated Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch (1863-1944), in 1899. This complex woodcut exemplifies Munch's groundbreaking exploration of the human psyche and his innovative printmaking methods near the turn of the century. The piece demonstrates his mastery over the demanding medium and his ability to achieve richly colored, textured results.

The medium is a sophisticated woodcut printed in four distinct colors: light green, orange, blue-green, and red-brown, applied to ivory Japanese paper. Characteristic of Munch’s experimental approach to his prints, this specific work was produced using two separate wood blocks, each meticulously sawn into two distinct sections. This process, often referred to as the jigsaw method, allowed the artist to ink the fragmented pieces individually with different colors before reassembling them for a single, multi-hued impression, thus eliminating the time-consuming process of multiple color runs.

This technique became synonymous with the artist’s graphic output during this highly productive period in Norway. The visual tension between the highly saturated colors and the subject matter-a disembodied head set against an abstract shoreline or wave-reflects the fin-de-siècle anxieties prevalent in much of Munch's art. The composition bridges the deep psychological focus of Symbolism with the formal simplification that would define Expressionism. This significant print, an essential example of the artist's graphic output, is held in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.