Discourse on Creation of 'The Scream' by Edvard Munch

Atmosphere of Dread

Introduction—Entering the World of Munch

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow seekers of art and emotion, today I invite you into the world of Edvard Munch—a world where color and line become vessels of anguish, where a single painting can embody the existential tremors of the human condition. 

Our focus is the 1910 version of The Scream, one of Munch’s most haunting reworkings of the image he conceived in the 1890s, a painting that has since come to symbolize the universal cry of modern humanity.

But instead of viewing this work only as an outcome, let us journey backward. 

Let us stand beside Munch in his studio, before the raw canvas, and follow his process step by step—from the blank surface to the swirling, agonized crescendo of line and color. Through this, we may not only understand how The Scream was made but also why it speaks to us with such terrible beauty.

Silence Before the Cry

Stage 1: The Blank Canvas—Silence Before the Cry

Imagine, first, a quiet studio in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, in the early 20th century. 

The canvas is bare, taut, and unblemished. Its whiteness is not empty—it is tense, waiting, like the still air before a storm. 

For Munch, the blank canvas was not an innocent surface; it was a challenge, a confrontation.

Here stands the artist, already carrying within him the memory of an evening walk along a fjord, when the sky blazed red and he felt, as he later wrote, "a great infinite scream pass through nature." 

That memory, recurring and visceral, becomes the seed from which the painting will grow. The blankness is soon to be filled with trembling lines and volcanic hues.

Outlines of Terror

Stage 2: The Drawing—Outlines of Terror

With charcoal or diluted paint, Munch begins sketching. He is not drafting with cold precision; his lines tremble, undulate, and almost writhe upon the surface. 

The main figure is established first: a human form, but reduced to essence—sexless, featureless, almost skeletal. The arms rise to the sides of the face, as if muffling or amplifying the silent scream. 

The head is round and elongated, like a skull under duress. The mouth, wide and oval, is nothing less than the abyss of sound.

Behind the figure, the balustrade of the bridge takes shape in straight, stark lines—rigid, geometric, and man-made. Beyond it, two figures appear faintly, indifferent witnesses to the cry in the foreground. Already, tension emerges: order and geometry in the bridge, chaos and turbulence in the figure.

At this stage, the figure is ghostly, a suggestion of terror awaiting its environment. The canvas still breathes with silence, but the scream is foreshadowed.

Stage 3: The Underpainting—Atmosphere of Dread

Munch next applies an underpainting—a foundation of color to establish mood and depth. Unlike the classical painters who sought harmony, Munch deliberately chooses dissonance. He blocks in broad zones of tone: a ground of ochres for the bridge, dark greens and browns for the fjord and shoreline, and, most importantly, swathes of orange and red across the sky. These colors are not naturalistic; they are symbolic, emotional.

The sky is already aflame, suggesting both sunset and apocalypse. The fjord is heavy, dark, and oppressive. The underpainting does not yet have detail, but it already vibrates with unease.

The central figure, left pale, contrasts violently with the colored background. It stands as if illuminated not by light, but by despair.

Stage 4: The Layering of Lines—Rhythm of Anxiety

Here begins one of Munch’s most distinctive techniques: rhythmic, undulating lines that weave through the composition. With the brush loaded in strong pigments, he traces arcs of color across the sky—orange, yellow, and red merging into blood-like currents. 

These are not brushstrokes that describe; they pulsate, they echo, and they resonate. The sky itself seems to scream.

The fjord is painted in deep, cool blues and greens, yet these too are bound by waves of undulating lines, mirroring the sky’s turbulence. The world itself appears to shudder in sympathy with the central figure.

Meanwhile, the balustrade is reinforced with dark, angular strokes, an anchor of rigidity cutting across the chaos. The two distant figures are darkened, reduced to silhouettes—stable, detached, almost alien in their indifference.

Stage 5: The Central Figure – Flesh of a Scream

Attention returns to the figure at the front. Munch fills in its head with pallid tones—yellows, whites, sickly flesh colors. Unlike a living complexion, it glows with the color of wax or bone, a death mask rather than a human portrait. Shadows in blues and greens give it a hollowed, cadaverous quality.

All the images above are generated with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

The mouth, painted in stark black and red, opens as a void. The eyes are wide, circular, staring not outward but inward into the abyss of terror. The hands, sketched earlier, are reinforced with long, thin strokes, clinging to the face in helpless agony.

Notice that this figure is not rendered in detail. It is stripped to the essence of emotion, almost a caricature, but precisely in that simplification lies its universality. This is no single person—it is humanity itself.

Stage 6: Intensification—Screaming with Color

At this stage, Munch strengthens his colors, amplifying their discord. The reds of the sky grow hotter, the oranges more electric. The blues of the fjord deepen into almost black, swallowing the horizon. The bridge is accentuated in deep, straight bands, thrusting diagonally across the composition.

The figure, pale against the fiery sky, now vibrates as the lines around it flow like sound waves. It is as if the scream of the figure has infected the environment, transforming sky, water, and earth into echoes of its despair. Nature itself is caught in the same cry.

The Scream, 1910
Edvard Munch, Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons

Stage 7: Final Refinements—The Echo of Silence

Munch does not aim for polish but for intensity. His final touches emphasize contrasts—the glowing sky against the pale figure, the rigid bridge against the undulating waves. 

He may add small adjustments to the hands, strengthen the outlines of the mouth, heighten the luminosity of the head.

But the painting remains deliberately rough, almost raw. Its power lies not in finish, but in immediacy. 

Each stroke retains its urgency, as if painted in a single breath.

Now, the work is complete. The scream is not only on the figure’s lips; it reverberates through every inch of the canvas.

Conclusion – Beyond the Canvas

Ladies and gentlemen, from blank canvas to finished painting, The Scream (1910) reveals to us not a mere scene, but an inner vision. Each stage—from the ghostly drawing to the layered waves of color, from the stark geometry of the bridge to the hollow-eyed figure—brings us closer to Munch’s experience of existential dread.

He has taken us to the edge of a fjord and into the depths of our own consciousness. He has shown us that the scream is not merely heard but felt in color, line, and form. And even now, more than a century later, we stand before it and feel our own hearts resonate with that silent cry.