Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian painter whose Expressionist works harnessed emotional discord to create mysterious and symbolic scenes. Working in a style characterized by swirling shapes and otherworldly colors, his haunting painting, The Scream (1893), is among the most iconic works of art history. “For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety, which I have tried to express in my art,” Munch once reflected. “Without anxiety and illness, I should have been like a ship without a rudder.” Born on December 12, 1863 in Løten, Norway, the artist’s childhood was darkened by the death of his mother and sister from tuberculosis as wells as his father’s mental illness. Enrolling at the Royal School of Art and Design in Oslo in 1880, after initially studying engineering for a year, he adopted a naturalist style influenced by the Impressionists. During a visit to Paris in 1889, he saw the works of Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat, both of whom influenced Munch’s use of color and paint application. Troubled by his mental health for many years, the artist suffered a breakdown in 1908 that left him hospitalized. Munch was able to slowly recover and lived out the rest of his life in quiet contemplation in his native country, his works going on to become a major influence on Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and other German Expressionists. He died on January 23, 1944 in Ekely, Norway at the age of 80. In 1963, the Munch Museet in Oslo opened, housing an extensive collection of the artist’s paintings, prints, and drawings. Today, his works are held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Tate Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.