Three Seated Young Women 1906 - 1907

Edvard Munch made this painting of three young women, we don’t know exactly when, in oil on canvas. I’m drawn to the thin washes of color, the way the figures emerge from the light brown of the canvas. It feels like seeing a memory, something not quite in focus. There’s a looseness to the brushstrokes, a sense of searching, that reminds me of the messy, unresolved nature of making art. Look at how the yellow dress of the central figure is painted with such confidence, those bold vertical strokes, almost like light itself. And yet, the faces are blank, turned away. It’s this tension between presence and absence, clarity and ambiguity, that makes the painting so compelling. Munch is maybe asking questions about memory, and the difficulty of really ever knowing anyone. This feels like the early stages of a painting, but like a finished statement in itself. Like a drawing, in fact, or a study for something bigger, like the way Cezanne would work on a painting over and over.