"the Scream" by Edvard Munch

...

[pic 2]

After Edvard Much painted it, he wrote how the visionary experience of “The Scream” came to him at Ekeberg, Oslo:

“I went along the road with two friends—

The sun set

Suddenly the sky became blood—and I felt the breath of sadness

A tearing pain beneath my heart

I stopped—leaned against the fence—deathly tired

Clouds over the fjord of blood dripped reeking with blood

My friends went on but I just stood trembling with an open wound

in my breast trembling with anxiety I heard a huge extraordinary scream pass through nature”

And in the red stripes of the painting, Munch penciled the words (in German): “Only someone insane could paint this”. We can compare him to the dutchman Vincent Van Gogh, who had similar mental conflicts to solve such as severe depressions and anxiety attacks.

When Munch died the authorities discovered in the second floor of his house a collection of 10008 paintings, 4443 drwaings, 15391 prints, as well as woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, and photographs.To be honest, before I started writing this essay I had only heard the name of Edvard Munch a couple of times, and I also knew that he painted “The scream”, but nothing more. When I started searching for his works and his career as an artist to have some context to start in, his works astonished me infinitely, I wanted to change the theme of my essay because paintings such as “Vampire” and “The sick child” transmitted so much to me, that I could feel a kind of connection with what Munch was trying to express. I think we all have ever felt as Munch or as the screamer at least once in our lives, trapped into something where we feel everything is distorted and we just want to get out. We feel we´re alone and that the others are just spectators of what we´re feeling.

This is why I am forever fascinated with Edvard Munch´s scream.