4. The Scream
One of the world’s most haunting and iconic paintings is Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The first iteration of The Scream was painted in 1893 by the Norwegian Expressionist. The art features a humanoid being on a pier, with the face drawn into an anguished scream, which is against the backdrop of a vivid orange sky. Munch ultimately created four versions of The Scream, with the oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard being the most widely recognized version. The others were created with pastels and tempera. A lithograph stone version was made, with some of the prints being hand-colored by Munch himself.
While Munch is an expressionist, and thus an orange sky isn’t particularly strange, theorists have still sought out a natural source of the orange sky. One popular theory was that the sky was meant to depict the atmosphere over Europe after the eruption of Krakatoa. The volcano ejected so much as that the skies over Europe had vivid, fiery sunsets for months.
Due to being such iconic and valuable paintings, two of the painted versions have been stolen. One was taken during the 1994 Olympics and not recovered for several months. Another was seized in 2004 by gunmen. This version was not recovered for two years.
