Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker whose intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. One of his most well-known works is The Scream of 1893...
NationalityNorwegian
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth12 December 1863
CityAdalsbruk, Norway
CountryNorway
I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous infinite scream of nature.
If what you want to paint is the emotive mood in all its strength... then you must not sit and stare at everything and depict it exactly as one sees it.
This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.
From the moment of my birth, the angels of anxiety, worry, and death stood at my side, followed me out when I played, followed me in the sun of springtime and in the glories of summer. They stood at my side in the evening when I closed my eyes, and intimidated me with death, hell, and eternal damnation.
I have been given a unique role to play on this earth: given to me by a life filled with sickness, ill-starred circumstances and my profession as an artist. It is a life that contains nothing that resembles happiness, and moreover does not even desire happiness.
I was walking along a road one evening – on one side lay the city, and below me was the fjord. The sun went down – the clouds were stained red, as if with blood. I felt as though the whole of nature was screaming – it seemed as though I could hear a scream. I painted that picture, painting the clouds like real blood. The colours screamed.
To die is as if one's eyes had been put out and one cannot see anything any more. Perhaps it is like being shut in a cellar. One is abandoned by all. They have slammed the door and are gone. One does not see anything and notices only the damp smell of putrefaction.
When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights.
My will exceeds my talents.
I sense a scream passing through nature. I painted ... the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked.
Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.
I do not paint what I see, but what I saw.
My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Sometimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm's edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss.
I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart