Exhibit takes a more thorough look at Munch

With the opening of “Munch by Himself” at the Royal Academy of Art, the public is getting a chance to look into the troubled psyche of Norwegian Impressionist Edvard Munch.

The exhibit’s 150 pieces, including 70 oil paintings, serve as Munch’s visual autobiography. His paintings express his moods, neuroses, relationships and obsessions.

“He wanted to paint what you couldn’t see with your own eyes, what you had to experience,” said Iris Mueller-Westermann, curator of international art at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

The paintings span the artist’s life, whereas previous exhibitions focused mainly on work completed before his nervous breakdown in 1908.

“It consistently shows him as an interesting artist,” said Norman Rosenthal, Royal Academy exhibitions secretary. “Previous exhibitions have focused on his earlier symbolic work.”

“Munch by Himself” displays the artist’s drawings and sketchbooks along with the finished paintings.

“It’s important to show how he developed his visual thinking throughout his life,” Mueller-Westermann said.

Munch rarely portrayed himself as a painter, as many of his colleagues did in their self-portraits. One of his early works, “Self-Portrait With Cigarette” (1895), shows the artist surrounded by a cloud of deep blue and gray smoke.

“He presents himself as a modern thinker, not a craftsman,” Mueller-Westermann said.

Themes of mortality and death underlie many of the self-portraits. The 1895 lithograph “Self-portrait With Skeleton Arm” shows only Munch’s head in white, surrounded by a sea of pure black and bordered on the bottom by the bones of a forearm.

Rounded brushstrokes radiate around many of the painted figures, portraying instability and energy. Munch’s fragile mental state is evident especially in his 1906 painting “Self-Portrait With a Bottle of Wine.”

Many of Munch’s paintings depict him with women and explore the relationship between sexuality and death.

After a breakup with his girlfriend, Tulla Larsen, Munch painted himself lying in bed nude and dead, with her as his killer. He titled the painting “Death of Marat 1,” echoing an 18th century painting by Jacques-Louis David.

Paintings after Munch’s nervous breakdown are brighter, favoring light blues and yellows over his previous reds and blacks.

Toward the end of his life, Munch became fixated on his own health. His “Self-Portrait After the Spanish Flu” and “Self-Portrait During Eye Disease” focus on illness.

Munch confronts the aging process and his own frailty in “Self-Portrait as a Seated Nude” (1920-1934). The artist died in 1944.

Last year, gunmen stole two of Munch’s most famous paintings from the Munch-museet in Oslo, Norway. The stolen paintings -- “Madonna” and one of four versions of “The Scream” -- have not been recovered.