Edvard Munch
Norwegian painter (1863–1944)
Edvard Munch: from early drawing to The Scream
Choosing to paint
Edvard Munch was born in Norway in 1863. Illness repeatedly kept him out of school as a child, and drawing became an important occupation. The MUNCH museum traces his public career from a debut in the 1880s through more than sixty years of work. His early decision to become a painter preceded the symbolic pictures for which he is now most widely known.
An image takes shape
During the 1890s Munch developed images concerned with emotion and inner experience. The National Museum of Norway connects his 1892 Sick Mood at Sunset. Despair to The Scream: the landscape and composition remain related, but the central figure changes dramatically. The Scream became an unusually open image of anxiety, inviting different readings rather than presenting a conventional portrait of a particular person.
Reworking a motif
Munch did not leave The Scream as a single painting. The MUNCH museum records four coloured versions and a lithograph, while the National Museum holds one of the coloured works. Repeating the motif across painting, drawing and print gave it several material forms. His later career also belongs to the development of Expressionism, not simply to the fame of one image.