4. The Scream / Edvard Munk (1893)

The Scream / Edvard Munk (1893)

The Scream / Edvard Munk (1893)

Oil on canvas, H:91 cm, W: 73.5

■ Statement

"One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream."

■ Brief Biographical Information of Artist 

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. One of his most well-known works is The Scream of 1893.

■ Background of the Art work

Edvard Munch created four versions in various media. The National Gallery, Oslo, holds one of two painted versions. The Munch Museum holds the other painted version and a pastel version from 1893. These three versions have not traveled for years.The Scream is the popular name given to each of four versions of a composition, created as both paintings and pastels, by the Expressionist artist Edvard Munch between 1893 and 1910. Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature) is the title Munch gave to these works, all of which show a figure with an agonized expression against a landscape with a tumultuous orange sky. Arthur Lubow has described The Scream as "an icon of modern art, a Mona Lisa for our time."

■ Connection Between the Art and the Theme 

This art work is really popular to express people's anxieties, stresses, and pain in our life. By the face of the painting, we can easily imagine the theses anxieties, stresses, pain, and maybe even the stress that might develop with an individual's fantasy & eros.