Edvard Munch was a Norwegian painter whose intensely symbolic work prefigured Expressionism and exerted a profound influence on 20th-century art. Haunted by death, illness, anxiety, and unrequited love — themes rooted in a difficult childhood marked by the early deaths of his mother and sister — he poured raw psychological anguish into his canvases. His masterpiece The Scream (1893) has become one of the most recognizable images in Western culture, a universal emblem of existential dread. Munch himself described the painting's inspiration: walking with friends, he suddenly felt exhausted and melancholy, then 'the sky turned blood red... I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.' He reworked the composition four times.
