Edvard Munch lived from 1863 to 1944. He was a Norwegian artist, whose brooding, anguished paintings and graphic works, based on personal grief and obsessions, were instrumental in the development of expressionism.

Munch was born in Løten, Norway on December 12, 1863. He began painting at the age of 17 in Christiania. A state grant, awarded in 1885, enable him to study briefly in Paris. For 20 years there after Munch worked chiefly in Paris and Berlin. At first influenced by impressionism and postimpressionism, he turned to a highly personal style and content, increasingly concerned with images of illness and death.

The best known of all Munch’s works is The Scream, painted in 1893 and is now hanging in the nationalgallery in Oslo. This, and The Sick Child, painted in 1881-86 is also hanging in the nationalgallery in Oslo. The picture The Sick Child does reflect from Munch’s childhood, occasioned by the death of his mother and sister from tuberculosis.

In 1908 Munch’s anxiety became acute and he was hospitalized. He returned to Norway in 1909 and died in Oslo on Januar 23, 1944. The relative tranquillity of the rest of his life is reflected in his murals for the University of Oslo, and his vigorous, brightly colored lanscapes. Although his later paintings are not as tortured as his earlier work, a return to introspection marks his late self-portraits, notably Between Clock and Bed painted in 1940 and is hanging in Munch Museum in Oslo.

Munch’s works is simple, direct, and vigorous in style, and powerful in subject matter. Few of Munch’s paintings are found outside Norway. His own collection is housed in the Munch Museum in Oslo.