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
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.
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.
Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.
A work of art can only come from the interior of man. Art is the form of the image formed upon the nerves, heart, brain and eye of man.
At different moments you see with different eyes. You see differently in the morning than you do in the evening. In addition, how you see is also dependent on your emotional state. Because of this, a motif can be seen in many different ways, and this is what makes art interesting.
Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.
The colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.
Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.
I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.
I should have considered it wrong to have finished the Frieze before the room for its accommodation and the funds for its completion were available.
I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.
The way one sees is also dependent upon one's emotional state of mind. This is why a motif can be looked at in so many ways, and this is what makes art so interesting.
When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.
In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color