Edvard Munch's The Scream Is Recovered

Edvard Munch's The Scream Is Recovered

On May 7, 1994, one of four versions of Edvard Munch's expressionist masterpiece The Scream was recovered after it had been stolen on February 12 of the same year from an exhibition arranged for the Winter Olympics, then being held in Norway. A pair of burglars climbed through a window of the Norwegian National Gallery in Oslo and made off with the painting of a screaming figure, Munch's most famous work. The painting is so well known that most art experts doubted that it could be sold, even on the black market, but since it is quite fragile, having been executed in tempera and pastels on thin paper, the authorities feared that it would be damaged or destroyed once the thieves realized they could not dispose of it. Fortunately, the picture was recovered unharmed, in a hotel south of Oslo, after the thieves made a tentative bid for ransom money. The police arrested three Norwegians for the crime.

Another version of the painting was stolen, along with Munch's The Madonna, on August 22, 2004, from the Munch Museum in Oslo by armed, masked thieves in mid-day as frightened patrons looked on, thinking they might be under terrorist attack. Witnesses attributed the success and ease of the theft to lax security at the museum and no alarm system to speak of protecting these valuable works. This version of the painting had yet to be recovered as of the writing of this book.

Edvard Munch, the artist who created The Scream, was born on December 12, 1863, in the canton of Løten, Norway. He had a tragic childhood as one family member after another succumbed to tuberculosis. Munch began painting as a teenager in the capital city of Oslo, then known as Christiana. He completed his studies in Paris and remained abroad for several decades. He worked in Paris and in Berlin developing a bold and violent style of expressionist painting which typically focused on scenes involving death and suffering. Munch himself was emotionally troubled, prone to attacks of melancholy and anxiety. Much of his work was upsetting to viewers, including his 1893 painting The Scream, and some of his exhibits were even closed by local authorities. After being hospitalized for an anxiety attack in 1908, Munch went home to Norway, where he turned to more tranquil projects, such as murals and landscapes. He died on January 23, 1944, in Oslo.

Munch's notable works include the Frieze of Life series (of which The Scream is a part), The Bridge and The Sick Child. Most of his paintings are held by the National Gallery and the Munch Museum in Oslo. Outside Norway, he is represented in museum collections mainly by his etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts; he was an influential graphic artist as well as an important painter.