Chemistry

Munch had been working at this subject since about 1909, and earlier versions of it now belong to the Munch Museum. The canvas he finished for the ceremonial hall of the University of Oslo was painted between 1914 and 1916, the first years of the First World War. Norway stayed neutral, while elsewhere chemistry was being put to military use, and in April 1915 the German army released chlorine gas over the trenches near Ypres. The laboratory here points the other way. A young nude man pours from a green flask into a bowl held by a young woman, and the smoke rising from it drifts up into small fetus-like figures, what the painter called a moment pointing towards the future. He wrote that the panel stood for hidden energies, the workplace of fire and warmth. Two round glass flasks stand at its foot.