Bergen & the Southwestern Fjords - Norway - page 349

Hosts several temporary exhibitions every year, as well as a contemporary art collection
with a focus on Norwegian and Scandinavian artists from the 1980s onwards. Cafe Smak-
verket and a great gallery shop are at street level.
KODE 3 GALLERY
( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; Rasmus Meyers allé 7)
The Rasmus Meyer Collection's Edvard Munch hoard is among the world's best. Far less
trafficked than Olso's Munch Museum and National Gallery, the rooms are beautifully
hung and fabulously intimate: an apt place to really spend some time contemplating the
artist's key works. This includes several pieces from his Frieze of Life, a series of paint-
ings depicting various aspects of the psyche - Jealousy, Melancholy, Women in Three
Stages, Evening on Karl Johan and By the Death Bed .
Works from 18th- and 19th-century Norwegian painters such as JC Dahl, Harriet Back-
er, Erik Werenskiold and Gerhard Munthe are interesting as well as atmospheric, as are the
complete rooms of strange and wonderful historical interiors from the Bergen area.
Rasmus Meyer, a local businessman and philanthropist, was among the first significant
collectors of Munch's art, securing major works from all of his artistic periods. The 1924
building was designed by Ole Landmark and purpose-built to house Meyer's extraordinary
gift.
Guided tours in English of the Munch rooms take place at noon on Saturdays and
Sundays in July and August, and are free with your entrance ticket.
KODE 4 GALLERY
( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; Rasmus Meyers allé 9)
Converted into a museum in 2003, this austerely beautiful functionalist building from the
1930s was the head office of Bergen's electrical power company. It's home to a large per-
manent collection of European modernist works including the odd Klee, Picasso and Miro,
and there is a gallery dedicated to the Norwegian landscape painter Nikolai Astrup.
Astrup's neo-Romantic, almost naive, paintings, drawings and woodcuts depict the
fjords, fields and mountains of his home region of Jølster, as well as traditional life there at
the beginning of the 20th century. Viewing his work makes for an evocative background to
your own exploration of Norway's west.