Edvard Munch nature." He later described the personal anguish behind the painting, "for several years I was almost mad… You know my picture, 'The Scream?' I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood… After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again." In summing up the painting's effects, author Martha Tedeschi has stated: "Whistler's Mother", Wood's "American Gothic", Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and Edvard Munch's "The Scream" have all achieved something that most paintings—regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value—have not: they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every
Edvard Munch in Germany—and a bright door opens up for me." However, despite this positive change, Munch's self-destructive and erratic behavior involved him first with a violent quarrel with another artist, then with an accidental shooting in the presence of Tulla Larsen, who had returned for a brief reconciliation, which injured two of his fingers. She finally left him and married a younger colleague of Munch. Munch took this as a betrayal, and he dwelled on the humiliation for some time to come, channeling some of the bitterness into new paintings. His paintings "Still Life (The Murderess)" and "The Death of Marat