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 in other artistic media to imagine a new ‘Gothic modernity’, unlocking a different energy of modern art and creative experiment beyond nation-centric stories.

The book sheds light on the profound importance of medieval Gothic art for Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz and their contemporaries. It explores their re-imagining of Gothic art between the 1870s and 1920s to create new visions of the artist, ‘belonging’, modern society, sexuality, spirituality and identity. In these ways, a distant Gothic age is recreated as tantalisingly close to ‘modernity’, in short, to making modern art. Dark or radiant, enchanted or uncanny, these sites of ‘Gothic modernity’ inspired Munch’s and Kollwitz’s generation with urgent imaginaries for creating worlds.

Artists include: Hans Baldung Grien, Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Dirk Bouts, Arnold Böcklin, Gustav Carus, Lovis Corinth, Lucas Cranach The Elder, Otto Dix, Albrecht Dürer, James Ensor, Lyonel Feininger, Akseli Gallen-kallela, Matthias Grünewald, Ernst Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Klinger, Käthe Kollwitz, Lowis Korinth, George Minne, Paula Modersohn-becker, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, Helene Schjerfbeck, Hugo Simberg, Carl Spitzweg, Marianne Stokes, Henrik Sorensen, Hans Thoma, Gustave Van De Woestyne, Vincent Van Gogh, Emanuel Vigeland, Gustav Vigeland, et al.