Munch's The Scream: History, Versions, and Meaning Explored

Key facts

• A lithographic version of The Scream is exhibited at Palazzo Reale in Milan in autumn 2024.
• The lithograph is a loan from the Munch Museum in Oslo.
• The Scream was inspired by a walk around 1889 on Ekberg hill near Oslo.
• Munch described the experience in a poem on the frame of the 1895 version.
• There are about fifty versions of The Scream, including four principal ones.
• The first principal version is a pastel on cardboard from 1893.
• The second is an oil painting from 1893 at the National Museum in Oslo.
• The third version, a pastel on paper from 1895, sold at Sotheby's in 2012 for $120 million.
• The fourth version is a tempera on panel from 1910.
• The first public exhibition of The Scream was at the 1902 Berlin Secession.
• The figure's features may be inspired by a Peruvian mummy from Cuzco seen at the Musée du Trocadéro in Paris.
• The style uses contrasting curved and rigid brushstrokes.
• Two distant men in the painting symbolize bourgeois insensitivity.
• The work reflects fin-de-siècle pessimism and Freudian studies.