Girl and Three Male Heads Edvard Munch Buy Art Prints Now
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Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 14, 2023
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Girl and Three Male Heads is a painting done on canvas by Edvard Much in 1898. It is said that he created it then changed his mind and painted another one on top of it. This image was later discovered underneath another piece and restored.

It was believed to have been created in his hometown. The image was restored and kept by Bremen Kunsthalle museum. The painting shows a naked girl seated on a chair facing three heads of men that look like masks. Based on colour combinations, this room looks dark and disorienting. The girl is not facing the masked faced straight but instead looking down. There are lines of green against brown colours in the room. The faces come in different colours with the light one on the extreme right being bald, the centre one deep red and the mask on the foreground has a greenish hue.

Edvard Munch family had confronted death severally in his early earls. When he was just six years, he lost his mother. His sister would later die a few years later. Just before creating this painting, he lost his father. The impact of these three deaths had an impact on the kind of images he made, most of which talked of fear, grief and trauma. However, he also explored human psychology and emotions in his stories. In this image, the seated girl looks terrified of the masked faces more than conversing with them. Besides, the masks do not lock to be chatting in unison, meaning that they might not be actual people but rather imaginations in her mind. Critics have likened the image to a growing girl in her puberty. She is conscious of her growing body, but she is also receiving attention from other quarters.

As stated in the image, she is terrified about what the world holds for her and not sure how to confront her fears. This is an intricate depiction of fear for complicated things like her hormonal and physical body changes and the way the world out there does not understand what goes on in her. Edvard used expressionism style of painting for this piece. This style of the painting depicts the emotions and responses that are aroused in a subject concerning the world around them. Therefore, the objects around the subject are not always real or everyday items. In most cases, they are also distorted to bring an emotional effect on the reader. Besides, artists make use of vivid colours to create the mood of the painting and deliver the message. This style came to being in the late 1800s and was picked by other artists that included Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Wassily Kandinsky.

Girl and Three Male Heads in Detail Edvard Munch