A broad collection of their paintings, which greatly influenced modern 19th-century artwork, will hang side by side for the first time at an exhibit opening at the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands opening on Friday.
By juxtaposing works like “The Scream”, Munch's best known painting of a tormented soul, against Van Gogh's "The Bridge of Trinquetaille”, the creators explore similarities in their visions of life.
Both painters broke from traditional styles, working with forms that embraced deep swirling colours or thick dabs. Though they both spent time in Paris in the mid-1880s, their paths never crossed.
“Through their experiences of suffering and pain as well as their ability to see beauty in the smallest things, they were able to render that personal experience in their art,” said Van Gogh Museum curator Maite van Dijk.
Art historians and the public alike have long compared their works, but the exhibition, which was six years in the making, offered a first chance for a formal comparative study.
Van Gogh, relatively unknown during his life, was still an influence to Munch, who wrote about the Dutch post-impressionist in his journals, which will also be on display.
“I had thought and desired, like he, not to allow my flame to become extinguished and with burning brush to paint until the end,” Munch wrote in a tribute to Van Gogh in 1933.
The exhibition features the first version of the “The Scream”, on loan from the Munch Museum in Oslo, to be seen in the Netherlands for the first time.
Munch created four other versions of the artwork until 1910, three of which are on display in Norway.
The fourth was sold in 2012 for just under $120 million in one of the world’s most expensive art auctions to date.
Among others, the exhibition brings together Munch’s “Starry Night”, painted in 1922, and Van Gogh’s 1888 “Starry Night Above the Rhone”, demonstrating Van Gogh’s influence on Munch.