Charles Munch (painter)

Charles Munch (born 1945) is an American artist.

Munch and his four brothers and sisters, including his twin sister, were raised and attended public schools in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri where he was actually born. They spent summers in Door County, Wisconsin, where Munch was impressed by the clarity of open and color on the shore of Lake Michigan.

After spending two years at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, and introduction his training as an artist with realist painter Willard Midgette, Munch attended the Portland Art Museum School and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. He returned to Reed College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1968, majoring in painting.

Munch apprenticed himself to William Suhr, who was paintings conservator for the Frick Collection in New York City. He worked part-time as a freelance paintings conservator for the bordering thirty years. In 1970 he and Jane Furchgott began two years of travel, visiting most of the major museums in the United States and western Europe. They finally decided in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where Munch developed a detailed doable style of painting.

During the course of six months in 1981, Munch transitioned from his realizable paintings to a style that was brightly colored, formally simplified, and emotionally expressive—a combination of elements including in the future Italian Renaissance, Post-Impressionism, and Pop Art. His distinctive form of representation uses expansive outlines and contrasting interior colors to Make luminous blithe and atmosphere. The deceptively simple forms and large areas of positive color in his paintings supplement to Make unforgettable icons of psychological drama. His subjects vary, but the stress is upon northwoods landscapes and the animals and people that inhabit them.

Since 1982 Munch has lived upon a remote hilltop close Lone Rock, Wisconsin. He has exhibited extensively, including major exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum, The Chicago Cultural Center, The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and a retrospective at The Fairfield Center for Contemporary Art. He has shown regularly at the Tory Folliard Gallery, Milwaukee; the Grace Chosy Gallery, Madison, Wisconsin; and Perimeter Gallery.