Madonna (Munch painting) a private home in Drammen, Norway. The fourth had been located the previous day in a private home in nearby Sande. During the court trials, Ole Christian Bach was suspected of having organized both the theft and the handling. In September 1992, Bach was sentenced to prison for seven months for handling stolen goods. On Sunday, 22 August 2004, the Munch Museum's versions of "Madonna" and "The Scream" were stolen by masked men wielding firearms. The thieves forced the museum guards to lie down on the floor while they snapped the cable securing the paintings to the wall and escaped
The Kiss (Munch painting) was part of a series Munch called the "Frieze of Life", on which he spent more than 30 years of his career. The cycle depicts stages of a relationship between men and women and is part of what Munch called "the battle between men and women that is called love". It includes portrayals of attraction, courtship, realization, and disappointment. According to the Museum of Modern Art, the dark ambiance of "The Kiss" is representative of Munch's ambivalence regarding romance. In the 1897 painting, art historian Reinhold Heller finds it "virtually impossible" to separate the two figures, particularly where their faces