The Scream - Edvard Munch (1893) - Painting analysis | Masterpieces in 3 minutes

The Scream - Edvard Munch
(1893, oil, tempera and pastel on cardboard, 91 x 71.5 cm | 36 in × 28.9 in)
The painting The Scream by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was created around 1883 using oil, tempera and pastel colours on cardboard. It is probably the artist's most famous work and is considered by some to be the beginning of Expressionism.
Munch, who was suffering from mental illness, used the motif to process a personal experience, a panic attack, which he had experienced a year earlier and recorded in his diary. When he was out walking with two friends one evening and the sky turned red thanks to the sunset, he clearly felt a scream and was sure he could hear this scream through nature.
In the painting, it is the colours that scream - he painted the clouds blood red, stretching across the upper third of the picture in an interplay of red and orange. The blue river meanders through the centre of the picture, above it the footbridge enters the picture at a steep diagonal. The resulting slope thus splits up the otherwise uniform landscape with its rhythmic, undulating lines. This landscape is greatly simplified, but has been identified as the fjords around Kristiania, today's Oslo.
In the foreground is a shadowy figure, facing the viewer head-on, whose head resembles a skull. The eyes and mouth are wide open and the hands are pressed to the ears. No conclusions can be drawn about the figure's age or gender. Its contours reflect the curved lines of the landscape and its colours echo those of the background.
At the other end of the footbridge, two other figures can be recognised; it seems as if their backs are turned towards the viewer. Uninvolved in the scenery, they contrast with the agitation of the figure in the foreground.
Munch used this motif even more frequently in his works. On one version, "Could only have been painted by a madman" is written in pencil on the reverse.