Quote of the Day

“Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye.. it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.” - Edvard Munch 

Did You Know?

There are technically five separate versions of Expressionist artist Edvard Munch’s most famous work, “The Scream”. The first two, from 1893 and created with tempera and crayon on cardboard, are located in the National Gallery in Oslo and the Munch Museum, respectively. A privately owned third version, created in 1895 with pastels, sold for nearly $120 million at auction. Yet another version, from 1895, is a black and white lithograph. A final version, completed in 1910 by Munch, due to the popularity of the previous incarnations, is also held in the Munch Museum. It made headlines for being stolen in 2004 and recovered in 2006.

Did You Know?

According to Edvard Munch, The Scream was inspired the day he was walking with his friends and saw that “the sky turned as red as blood” and that he heard an “enormous infinite scream of nature.” For years Munch’s inspiration was thought to be imagined until it was recently discovered that the probably was red on that day,  as a result of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia.The volcano’s impact was felt as far as New York where the sky was reported to be “crimsoned.” This same impact was felt in Munch’s town two days later with the town newspaper stating that “People believed it was a fire: but it was actually a red refraction in the hazy atmosphere after sunset.”

Did You Know?

There are technically five separate versions of Expressionist artist Edvard Munch’s most famous work, The Scream. The first two, from 1893 and created with tempera and crayon on cardboard, are located in the National Gallery in Oslo and the Munch Museum, respectively. A privately owned third version created in 1895 with pastels recently sold for nearly $120 million at auction. Yet another version from 1895 is a black and white lithograph. A final version, done in 1910 by Munch due to the popularity of the previous incarnations, is also held in the Munch Museum, and it made headlines in recent years for being stolen in 2004 and recovered in 2006.

There’s More to Munch Than “The Scream”

Edvard Munch - Vampire - 1893 - Oil on canvas - 100 x 110 cm - Private collection (click photo for larger image)Edvard Munch - Ashes - 1894 - Oil on canvas - 120.5 x 141 cm - National Gallery, Oslo (click photo for larger image)Edvard Munch (1863-1944) grew up in Christiania (now Oslo, Norway) and studied art under Christian Krohg, a Norwegian naturalistic painter. Munch's parents, a brother, and a sister died while he was still young, which probably explains the bleakness and pessimism of much of his work. Paintings such as Vampire (1893-94), and Ashes (1894) show his preoccupation with the darker aspects of life. The anxiety that haunts Munch’s art is expressed in a highly creative manner that taps into our emotions--even before we are wholly aware of the subject matter. Munch’s work had a powerful influence on the early Expressionists and continues to be felt today.