Edvard Munch’s The Scream: Meaning, Description and Analysis
A figure covers its ears beneath a red sky. Two walkers continue along the road. Sea, landscape and central body undulate as though the same vibration passed through them.
Edvard Munch’s The Scream is so familiar that its title can seem to explain it: the figure must be screaming. Munch’s own notes complicate that reflex. He wrote of “a great scream through nature.” The figure may be receiving the sound as much as producing it.
This is not merely a frightened face. The work stages a break between overwhelming inner experience and a world that keeps moving without sharing it.
In brief: The Scream is a motif that Munch developed in paintings, drawings and lithographs. The first painted version, made in 1893, belongs to the National Museum in Oslo.
Description of The Scream
The 1893 version measures 91 × 73.5 cm and combines tempera and grease pencil on cardboard. Those comparatively fragile materials help explain the museum’s conservation precautions.
In the foreground, an ageless, ungendered figure turns towards us. The skull is nearly hairless, eyes become cavities and the mouth a dark oval. Both hands frame the face and cover the ears.
A railing starts at the lower right and rushes towards two distant walkers. Beyond them lie a fjord, a town and boats beneath bands of red and orange sky.
- a road or promenade;
- a rigid railing;
- one central figure;
- two walkers;
- fjord and town;
- a red-banded sky.
With so few elements, every opposition becomes immediate.
A composition built from two visual languages
The straight line of the ordinary world
The railing creates a brutal perspective, directing the eye towards the walkers and horizon. The men remain upright, clothed and engaged in regular movement. Road, direction and perspective describe a measurable world.
The curves of anxiety
The central figure, fjord and sky reject that geometry. Body and face bend while landscape lines spread like waves. The National Museum compares the red bands to sound waves. Munch does not add a symbol for sound; he turns the entire composition into vibration.
That collision gives the work much of its force: uncontrolled inner experience meets a straight road on which other people continue walking.
The central figure also interrupts the perspective rather than comfortably occupying it. Its curved outline behaves less like a body placed inside a landscape than like a knot in the landscape’s movement. This is why a purely facial reading misses part of the work: anxiety is carried by the entire pictorial field.
Why is the sky red?
In a text based on a walk with two friends, Munch recalls the setting sun and a blood-red sky above the blue-black fjord. Anxiety overcame him while his companions carried on.
The note does not require one meteorological explanation. A real perception is intensified into a state of mind. Red suggests sunset, heat, blood and alarm; dark blue deepens the tension. Colour no longer simply records the hour but makes the landscape psychological.
Our guide to Symbolism places this bond between landscape, idea and inward experience in a broader context.
Who is the figure in The Scream?
Munch gives the figure no precise identity. Simplification removes the usual markers of age, gender and social class. MUNCH emphasises this ambiguity: individual, symbol and something between the two remain possible.
Is the figure actually screaming?
The hands cover the ears, not the mouth, and Munch’s words locate the scream in nature. The open mouth may express a cry, shock or broken breath. The uncertainty matters: the boundary between world and figure is unstable.
Why do the two men not react?
The walkers inhabit the same place but apparently not the same experience. Their distance creates an image of isolation. MUNCH reads this as a failure of communication: anxiety separates a person from those nearby.
Does The Scream belong to Expressionism?
Munch predates the German Expressionist groups but profoundly influenced them. He distorts the figure, intensifies colour and subjects landscape to emotion—principles that became central to Expressionism.
The work also belongs to late nineteenth-century Symbolism because it materialises a mental experience rather than narrating a complete external event. Munch is best understood at the junction of Symbolism and emerging Expressionism. Our guide to modern art follows this path towards the avant-gardes.
There is more than one Scream
MUNCH identifies four principal coloured versions: two tempera paintings and two pastel or crayon drawings. Two belong to MUNCH, one to the National Museum and one remains privately owned. Munch also made a lithograph in 1895, possibly printed in around thirty impressions.
The 1893 National Museum version
Generally treated as the first painted version, it combines tempera and grease pencil on cardboard. Collector Olaf Schou donated it in 1910.
The versions at MUNCH
MUNCH owns a painted version often dated around 1910, an 1893 drawing and lithographs. Light-sensitive works rotate: one version is shown while others rest under protected conditions.
The version sold in 2012
A privately owned pastel sold at Sotheby’s in May 2012 for $119,922,500. That price concerns one sheet; it is not the “price” of museum versions, which are not on the market.
Where can you see The Scream?
Two Oslo institutions exhibit the motif:
- the National Museum owns the 1893 painting;
- MUNCH owns several versions and normally shows at least one.
Displays can change for conservation, so check the museum website before travelling for a particular version.
How did The Scream become a popular icon?
Lithography was decisive. Prints travelled through journals, catalogues and international exhibitions. The central silhouette remained legible even in black and white.
Advertising, cinema and caricature later turned the gesture into shorthand for fear, surprise and anxiety. That circulation sometimes makes the image comic, yet confirms the efficiency of its design. The Scream now leads two lives: fragile artwork under controlled light and endlessly reproducible sign.
Recognition can therefore conceal complexity. Returning from the famous face to the railing, walkers and colour restores the relationships that make the motif more than an emoji-like expression.
A reinterpretation is not a reproduction
Art Virtuoso’s Colourful Scream Wall Art — Watercolour Astonishment uses an emotionally charged figure in a contemporary pastel palette. It does not reproduce Munch’s painting.
A reproduction aims to restore an existing composition; a reinterpretation retains a motif or tension while changing its visual language.
To compare this icon with other universal images, see our guide to twenty famous paintings.
Frequently asked questions
What does Munch’s The Scream mean?
It expresses anxiety as the boundary between person and nature dissolves. The walkers add isolation, but Munch imposed no single interpretation.
Is the figure screaming?
Possibly, yet the hands over the ears and Munch’s notes also suggest someone hearing a scream through nature.
How many versions exist?
Four main coloured versions, two paintings and two drawings, plus a lithograph printed in multiple impressions.
Where is the original?
The first painted version from 1893 is at the National Museum in Oslo, though “the original” oversimplifies Munch’s own variations.
Which technique did Munch use?
The 1893 version combines tempera and grease pencil on cardboard; other versions use pastel, crayon, oil and tempera.
How much is The Scream worth?
The privately owned pastel sold for $119,922,500 in 2012. Museum versions have no comparable market price.
A simple image, an unstable experience
The work’s force comes from a clear construction: straight road, undulating body, red landscape and two receding people. Cover the face and the sky and fjord still vibrate. Restore it, and the figure becomes the point where every line turns into sensation.