The Scream (1893) is the title of a painting by the Norwegian Edvard Munch and is part of a series of paintings entitled "Friso de la vida". It is one of the most important works of the expressionist movement and has become an icon.
In the author's own words:
I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun went down – suddenly the sky turned blood red, I stopped and leaned against a fence dead tired – blood and tongues of fire lurked on the dark blue of the fjord and the city – my friends continued and I stood still, trembling with anxiety, I felt an infinite scream that pierced nature.
The man represented in the painting is not screaming (although his title is the scream), but he is protecting himself from the noise. In the background is the Oslo Fjord, as seen from the Ekeberg hill, and the distorted lines around it would represent the noise. Munch made several versions of this work.
What inspired Edvard Munch to paint this painting?
According to a study carried out in 2003, it seems that the source of inspiration was a very intense sunset due to the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883.
If the Krakatoa is in Indonesia and Munch was in Oslo, how can it be? If we look at the catastrophic consequences of the eruption, we can get an idea:
On August 27, the volcano entered the final catastrophic stage of its eruption. Four huge explosions occurred at 5:30, 6:42, 8:20, and 10:02. The worst and loudest of these was the last explosion. Each was accompanied by very large tsunamis. A large area of the Sunda Strait and several sites on the Sumatran coast were affected by pyroclastic flows from the volcano causing the water near the island to boil. The explosions were so violent that they were heard 3,500 kilometers away, as far away as Australia and Rodriguez Island near Mauritius, 4,800 kilometers away; the sound of the destruction of Krakatoa is believed to be the loudest sound in recorded history, reaching levels of 180 dBSPL (a measure of the pressure deviation produced by sound and measured in decibels. SPL stands for:Sound Pressure Level) at a distance of 160 kilometers. It is said that sailors 40 km away were deaf from the noise. The ash was propelled to a height of 80 kilometers .
Another "version" of the scream :