The Scream You Can't Hear

Contrary to popular belief, the figure in Munch's The Scream isn't screaming—it's covering its ears. According to the painter, nature itself unleashes an infinite scream, and the silhouette tries to block it out.

Edvard Munch painted the first version of The Scream in 1893. In his journal, he describes the founding scene: one evening, on a hill near Oslo, the sky turned "blood red" and he felt "a great scream passing through nature." The work therefore depicts not an individual emotion but a cosmic anguish. Contrary to popular belief, the figure in Munch's The Scream isn't screaming—it's covering its ears.

The scarlet sky intrigued scientists. One hypothesis attributes it to the abnormally red twilights caused for years by the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, whose ash reached Europe. Munch may have retained the visual imprint. According to the painter, nature itself unleashes an infinite scream, and the silhouette tries to block it out.

Munch created several versions of the motif—painted, pastel, and lithograph. Two were spectacularly stolen, in 1994 and 2004, before being recovered. In 2021, analysis of a pencil inscription—"could only have been painted by a madman"—confirmed it was in Munch's own hand.