Art aficionados who have not visited a certain Norwegian chocolate factory will be able to see a series of paintings by Edvard Munch for the first time starting in May, when the Munch Museum in Oslo opens a show focused on the artist’s little-known public works from 1923.
An exhibition titled “Edvard Munch and the Chocolate Factory” will feature large-scale paintings temporarily relocated to the museum from a manufacturing center for Freia chocolate, for which Munch created the so-called Freia Frieze for the factory’s canteen in the later years of his career. “At the time, Freia—Norway’s most iconic chocolate brand, both then and now—was seen as a progressive company which prioritised the wellbeing, health and welfare of its employees,” reads an exhibition description at the Munch Museum’s website. “Two thirds of Freia’s staff were women, and the exhibition highlights women’s campaign for rights, as both employees and human beings.”
In a statement, Ana María Bresciani, who curated the exhibition, said, “The Frieze and the history of the Freia chocolate factory offer a unique lens to examine the intersections of art, industry, and gender in interwar Norway. “Munch pursued alternative, moveable, and non-monumental forms. The Freia commission exemplifies this and challenged the boundaries between public and private art.”
As reported by Artnet News, the paintings in the Freia Frieze—which will go on view May 21 and remain at the museum through November 10—depict “summer life in a Norwegian coastal town with Munch presenting scenes of work and play in loose and rapid brushstrokes. It’s a quotidian type of utopia: workers strain to gather fruit, fishermen amble towards boats, and people idle pensively by the shoreline in canvases washed over by the pale blue light of endless summer days.”
Along with the paintings, the show will include related sketches and other works from the Munch Museum’s collections that “illustrate his fascination with workers, women, and children.”
