Gothic Modern: From Edvard Munch to Käthe Kollwitz

How medieval Gothic art inspired a generation.

Gothic Modern illuminates the pivotal discovery of medieval Gothic art for Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, and their artist contemporaries. It explores their deep attraction to the Gothic art of Europe’s north and German lands via paintings, prints, and other artistic media to imagine a new Gothic modernity, unlocking a different energy of modern art and creative experiment beyond nation-centric stories.

Juliet Simpson and Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff recreate a distant and tantalizing Gothic age. They present a reimagining of Gothic art between the 1870s and 1920s to create new visions of the artist, belonging, modern society, sexuality, spirituality, and identity. Dark or radiant, enchanted or uncanny, these sites of Gothic modernity inspired Munch’s and Kollwitz’s generation with urgent imaginaries for creating worlds.

Juliet Simpson is professor and chair of art history and cultural memory in the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities at Coventry University, UK. Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff is director of the Ateneum Art Museum: Finnish National Gallery in Finland.