Edvard Munch Edvard Munch Edvard Munch (; ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter, whose best known work, "The Scream", has become one of the most iconic images of world art. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Studying at the Royal School of Art and Design in Kristiania (today’s Oslo), Munch began to live the bohemian life, under the largely negative influence of the nihilist Hans Jæger, who did, however, urge him to paint his own emotional and psychological state (‘soul painting’). From
Edvard Munch grandfather, my father…Kill yourself and then it's over. Why live?" Munch's paintings of the following year included sketchy tavern scenes and a series of bright cityscapes in which he experimented with the pointillist style of Georges Seurat. By 1892, Munch formulated his characteristic, and original, Synthetist aesthetic, as seen in "Melancholy" (1891), in which color is the symbol-laden element. Considered by the artist and journalist Christian Krohg as the first Symbolist painting by a Norwegian artist, "Melancholy" was exhibited in 1891 at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo. In 1892, Adelsteen Normann, on behalf of the Union of Berlin Artists, invited