Promenade in Spring 1917

Edvard Munch made this painting, Promenade in Spring, with oil on canvas. Look how Munch orchestrates these figures, almost like musical notes on a staff. There's a real process at play here, a push and pull between representation and abstraction. I'm really drawn to the texture, that slightly scrubbed surface, and the way the colours bleed into each other, like memories fading at the edges. See the way he renders the faces? They're not quite there, are they? More like ghosts or echoes. And that slash of red, right there in the lower left? It’s almost violent, cutting through the hazy atmosphere. It’s like a discordant note, a reminder of the darker currents beneath the surface. Thinking about contemporaries, maybe you could draw a parallel with some of Klimt's later landscapes, that same sense of dissolving form and heightened emotion. Of course, Munch's got a raw edge that's all his own. Ultimately, this is about seeing, feeling, and letting the paint do its thing, I reckon.