The famous artwork from 1895 by Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch was sold at Sotheby’s auction house in New York last week. The Scream is regarded as the epitome of Munch’s work and has since become an icon that is “recognized as the actual mental image of the existential angst of civilized man”.
Born in 1863, Edvard Munch was an expressionist painter who grew up in Oslo. During his early years as a painter he was widely criticized and his exhibitions caused much uproar in cities across Europe. After his breakthrough in 1892, the more personal and emotional content so visible in his works began to appear more clearly. Munch’s desire was to paint a new form of reality rooted in psychological experience, rather than visual. Consequently, Munch’s paintings depict the artists own mental state, often reinforced by a composition where the human figure is in the foreground with an event taking place in the background.
Munch painted four versions of the Scream. The three other versions are owned by the Munch Museum (2) and the National Museum (1), both in Oslo, where you can experience these and many other works by Norway´s most famous visual artist. Munch´s art is often presented at the leading museums around the world. On the 28th of June, the exhibition “The Modern Eye” will open at Tate Modern in London.