Olho no olho

Around 1899 Munch was assembling the cycle of pictures he called the Frieze of Life, scenes of love, jealousy and dread meant to hang as one sequence. Eye in Eye belongs to it. A man and a woman stand close in a bare landscape, holding each other's gaze, and the meeting looks more strained than tender. A tree rises between them, throwing its shadow across the gap, with one small red flower low in the grass. Munch painted the same handful of emotional situations over and over through his life, and this facing pair, caught between drawing together and staying apart, was one he came back to again and again.