Edvard Munch in Berlin — 1 Painting at Nationalgalerie

Edvard Munch Paintings in Berlin — Where to See Them

Berlin matters for experiencing Edvard Munch because the city preserves approximately one painting on permanent display across one museum — the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin (Sammlung Stadtmuseum / Märkisches Museum). Seeing Munch there is distinctive: his work is presented within a civic-historical museum context that situates his psychological modernism alongside Berlin’s urban and cultural history, exposing the connections between his themes and the city’s own turn-of-the-century transformations.

Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin (Sammlung Stadtmuseum / Märkisches Museum)

Although the Märkisches Museum holds only one painting by Edvard Munch, that single work is important because it places Munch directly into the civic and urban history context of Berlin—showing how his psychological, modernist language was read and collected by a major German city. The museum’s civic-collection setting lets visitors see Munch not only as a Scandinavian outsider but as an artist whose themes (urban alienation, modern life) intersected with Berlin’s own cultural debates and the development of German Expressionism.

Portrait of Walther Rathenau

1907

Munch’s 1907 portrait shows the Berlin industrialist, art collector and later statesman Walther Rathenau in a frontal, almost monumental pose that emphasizes his presence more than photographic likeness; note the spare background and Munch’s expressive handling of paint that isolates Rathenau’s face and hands. The work is significant both as a testament to Rathenau’s role as an early supporter and collector of Munch in Berlin and as a highlight of the Stadtmuseum Berlin’s modern collection—viewers should look for the tension between psychological intensity and restrained form, especially in the eyes and the modulated brushwork around the mouth and hands. ([stadtmuseum.de](https://www.stadtmuseum.de/en/exhibition/embracing-modernism?utm_source=openai))

Must-see

Address: Am Köllnischen Park 5, 10179 Berlin, Germany

Hours: Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00 (Monday closed)

Admission: 7 € regular / 4 € reduced (free for under 18s)

Tip: Ask at the desk which room the Munch painting is installed in before you start — the Märkisches rotates city-collection displays frequently; visit on a weekday morning when galleries are quiet, and be sure to look for nearby German Expressionist works or municipal archives in the same circuit, which many visitors miss and which illuminate how Berlin viewed Munch.

Edvard Munch and Berlin

Edvard Munch’s relationship with Berlin was formative and catalytic for both the artist and the city’s turn to modernism. In November 1892 Munch was invited by the Association of Berlin Artists (Verein Berliner Künstler) to mount a one‑man showing in the society’s renovated rotunda (Wilhelmstraße); the exhibition (Nov 5–12, 1892) provoked fierce public and critical controversy and was effectively shut down, establishing Munch’s shock effect in Germany. ¹ He spent extended periods in Berlin in the 1890s and again in the 1900s, showing widely and influencing younger German artists—his 1892–95 Berlin presence is often cited as the moment modernism “arrived” in the city. ²³ Key Berlin events include later commercial and museum shows: important gallery exhibitions with dealers such as Paul Cassirer (notably c.1907) and a major museum solo display organized by Ludwig Justi at the Kronprinzenpalais in 1927. ⁴⁵ The 1892 controversy also contributed to the debates that led to the founding of the Berlin Secession in 1898, a movement that thereafter exhibited Munch’s works and helped integrate him into German art discourse. ²³ Berlin was therefore neither a permanent home nor merely a stopover; it was a recurring, decisive stage in Munch’s international career.

Edvard Munch Paintings in Berlin — Where to See Them

At a Glance

Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin (Sammlung Stadtmuseum / Märkisches Museum)

Portrait of Walther Rathenau

Edvard Munch and Berlin

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