The Scream - Edvard Munch

Several facts indicate that Munch was aware of the danger of such art for a neurotic humanist like himself. He quickly abandoned this style and rarely, if ever, subjected a prominent figure to this kind of radical and systematic distortion.

At the top of another version of the subject (National Gallery of Oslo) he writes: "Can only have been painted by a madman". He certainly had a horror of madness, which had afflicted his sister Laura. In the painting he has set up a defence, in the form of the plunging perspective of the road and its fence, which preserves a rational three-dimensional world, keeping the swell of the curves of the art nouveau at bay.

The Scream has been the target of several high-profile art thefts. In 1994, the National Gallery version was stolen. It was recovered a few months later.