Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch Born in Oslo and famous all over the world with it’s painting ‘The Scream’: Edvard Munch. Edvard was born on December 12 1863. He grew up during hard times in Norway. His mother died of tuberculoses when he was five. His 15 year-old sister died later because of the same disease, what Edvard set to make the painting ‘the sick child’ (1885-1886). In 1881, living in Paris, he also lost his father. The fear of losing loved ones kept haunting him. He explained: “I don’t paint what I see, but what I saw’. It’s about inner experience, a mental turmoil. He mostly portrayed human emotions, fears, anxieties and insecurities. His style of painting had a big influence on the ‘expressionistic style’. 
 
In the winter of 1908/1909 he got a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in Copenhagen. When he came out of the hospital he started painting again, but this time in a more optimistic way and about more general subjects. In 1937, his paintings were declared ‘entartete Kunst’ (degenerated art) and were seized in Germany. Seven years later, at the age of 80, Edvard Munch died.
 

 

The Scream 
 
A lot of people think that the person in the painting is screaming, but this is not true. It’s nature that is screaming. That’s why the person is holding its ears covered. It’s a psychic self-portrait of Edvart Munch, based on a traumatic experience. One night, Edvard was walking back to the center of Olso with some friends and stood still at a bridge. While his friends started walking again, Edvard got ‘taken’ by the landscape, the air and the sunset. He heard and felt the landscape scream and got a helpless and depressed feeling. Later, when his turmoil relationship with a married woman ended, he painted this particular occurrence. There are four versions of this painting. In 1994, one of them got stolen. Three months later, it was found back when the thieves tried to sell it. In 2004, another version was stolen from the Munchmuseum in Oslo. This painting wasn’t found back.
The mask of the movie ‘Scream’ is based on the face of the figure on the painting.