Free shipping on orders over $60$5 flat rate under $604 items: 10% off · 8 items: 20% off
You save $77.97
Free shipping over $60 · 30-day returns · Dispatched in 1–2 business days
Evening on Karl Johan Street - Edvard Munch - Expressionist Oil Painting brings gallery-caliber art into everyday spaces. This cityscape oil painting is a 100% hand painted oil painting on canvas, created for buyers who want genuine expressionist canvas wall art instead of a mass-produced poster or paper print.
1892
Oil on canvas
84.5 cm (33.27 in.) x 121 cm (47.64 in.)
Bergen Kunstmuseum, Norway.
Munch's Evening on Karl Johan Street is a scene from a nightmare, an anxiety dream worked up into a painting.
Black coated figures with corpse-white faces like Roswell aliens stream zombie-like and unstoppable towards the viewer. Munch painted this vision of Karl Johan Street, the main street of Kristiania (now Oslo), in 1892; he'd previously painted relatively realistic pictures of the street, but here it becomes the scene for an Expressionist vision of angst.
He eradicates detail; the lighted windows seem to float in space like huge rectangular kites, and the faces are featureless except for their staring eyes (and in one case a massive black bar of moustache). What in real life was a pre-theatre or after-dinner stroll has been filtered through an anguished sensibility to become a horrific zombie movie. The strong diagonal composition, with the house fronts on the left hand side of the picture crowding the evening strollers into the foreground, creates a feeling of claustrophobia.
Munch divides the painting into three blocks of colour; the red house fronts, black figures, and the dark blue sky behind, in a design that is simple and effective. His colours are lurid - acid yellow, dark blue and violet, mauve and puce; they could almost come from Van Gogh, but the effect is different - in Van Gogh the colours shine with inward light, whereas in Munch they seem to come from a dream state where everything is unreal and weirdly altered. By cropping the picture, so that the bodies of the walkers aren't shown, Munch creates a sense of threat; the heads are even more nightmarish, and seem closer to the viewer, almost bursting right out of the painting.
One dark, slight figure walks away. This is often interpreted as Munch himself, turning away from a crowd whose noise and bustle is too much for the sensitive soul of an artist. He is doubled by the huge dark mass of a single tree looming on the right. Munch has created a powerful portrayal of loneliness and fear. There is an urgency and rawness to this painting which recalls that of Munch's best known painting, The Scream, but here, the threat comes from outside, rather than from the artist's own mind.
Collectors often choose this cityscape image when searching for cityscape oil painting that feels substantial rather than decorative or disposable.
We use a 100% hand-painted process: stretched artist-grade canvas, layered oil pigment, and a final protective varnish. There are no inkjet prints or mechanical reproductions in this collection — just a painted cityscape artwork made to order.
Build a bedroom gallery wall around this cityscape oil painting, or let it stand alone as a single statement. The hand painted canvas finish keeps the cityscape composition looking intentional in both classic and contemporary rooms.
Whether the search term is cityscape oil painting, bedroom wall art, or expressionist oil painting wall decor, this hand painted canvas delivers the same thing: a real painted surface, made to your chosen dimensions.
| Size | Price |
|---|---|
| 20 X 24 in | $77.98 |
| 24 X 36 in | $120.48 |
| 30 X 40 in | $166.48 |
| 36 X 48 in | $221.48 |
| 48 X 72 in | $430.48 |
The sizes shown are the reproduction canvas sizes we paint to order. The dimensions given in a work's description refer to the original artwork and will differ from the sizes offered here. Not sure? Read the size guide or e-mail us.
Free on orders over $60; a flat $5 below that. Dispatched in 1–2 business days; 30 days to send it back. Full policy.
Every canvas is painted by hand in oils on artist-grade stretched canvas, with an extra blank border left for framing. How to care for your painting.
Measurements are on the size guide, or e-mail [email protected] and we reply within one business day.
