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
Rolf Stenersen of his art collection, which centered around works by Munch and Ludvig Karsten. He wrote essays on artists such as Edvard Munch, Erik Harry Johannessen, Jakob Weidemann and Paul Klee. He published books on economy, including "Penger og tall" from 1937. His début as a fiction writer was the short story collection "Godnatt da du" from 1931. He donated his collection of Norwegian art to the municipality of Aker in 1936. From 1994 the collection has been on display in the Stenersen Museum in Oslo. His books were forbidden by the Nazi regime in 1941, and Stenersen had to flee