Born Dec 12th 1863 Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter celebrates his 160th birthday this year. His iconic painting “The Scream” is amongst the top 5 highest grossing artworks at auction.
Four versions of the painting exist and two of them have been stolen and subsequently recovered. The Scream is a study of Munch’s own soul or state of mind, a style he called soul painting. He was a man with borderline personality disorder and bore a heavy weight of psychological trauma with him throughout his life.
Initially inspired by impressionists he travelled to Paris where he observed Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec—who inspired him with how they used color to convey emotion. But ultimately he found impressionism too restrictive for his desire to expose the inner soul. From Paris he moved to Berlin and explored post-impressionism with the synthetist style. His 1892 exhibition in Berlin was so controversial that it closed after only one week. He went on to inspire the Paris Fauvists and maybe even the later Bauhaus. He certainly had enough influence to be branded a degenerate by the Nazis, but not degenerate enough to prevent them from stealing his artwork when they invaded Norway in WW2.
All in all you get the impression that he was a troubled and very lonely person, even for a Norwegian man. He spent periods of his life between drinking and brawling and then in therapy or isolation.
The solitude of night; by Li Bai
It was at a wine party
I lay in a drowse, oblivious.
Fallen petals fell and filled my lap.
When I arose, still drunk,
the birds had gone to roost,
and but few of my companions remained.
I walked by the river—alone in the moonlight.
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Mindship 