Edvard Munch 1863 – 1944

Biography

Edvard Munch was born in Ådalsbruk, Norway, and grew up in Christiania, now Oslo, in a household shadowed by illness and death. His mother and sister died young, and grief, anxiety, and love became the subjects of his art. He painted The Scream, The Kiss, Madonna, and The Dance of Life, works of raw emotional power that made him a pioneer of Expressionism and one of the most influential painters of the modern era. He lived for years in Germany and France, exhibiting with the Berlin Secession and enduring scandal, before returning to Norway, where he painted murals for Oslo University and lived in seclusion at Ekely. He left his estate to the city of Oslo. He died at Ekely in 1944. The Scream, in its several versions, has become one of the most reproduced images in the world, a symbol of modern anxiety.