Edvard Munch Quotes

“A person himself believes that all the other portraits are good likenesses except the one of himself.”

“A work of art can only come from the interior of man. Art is the form of the image formed upon the nerves, heart, brain and eye of man.”

“A work of art comes only from inside a human being.”

“All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart's blood. Art is your heart's blood.”

“Art comes from joy and pain...But mostly from pain.”

“At different moments you see with different eyes. You see differently in the morning than you do in the evening. In addition, how you see is also dependent on your emotional state. Because of this, a motif can be seen in many different ways, and this is what makes art interesting.”

“By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life.”

“Death is pitch-dark, but colors are light. To be a painter, one must work with rays of light.”

“Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.”

“For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.”

“From the moment of my birth, the angels of anxiety, worry, and death stood at my side, followed me out when I played, followed me in the sun of springtime and in the glories of summer. They stood at my side in the evening when I closed my eyes, and intimidated me with death, hell, and eternal damnation. And I would often wake up at night and stare widely into the room: Am I in Hell?”

“I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise, she might say something that confuses and distracts me.”

“I do not believe in art that is not born from man's need to open his heart.”

“I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of man's urge to open his heart”

“I don’t believe in an art that is not born out of man’s need to open his heart.”

“I felt as if there were invisible threads connecting us ? I felt the invisible strands of her hair still winding around me ? and thus as she disappeared completely beyond the sea ? I still felt it, felt the pain where my heart was bleeding ? because the threads could not be severed.”

“I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.”

“I have no fear of photography as long as it cannot be used in heaven and in hell.”

“I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.”

“I painted the picture, and in the colors the rhythm of the music quivers. I painted the colors I saw.”

“I sense a scream passing through nature. I painted the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked.”

“I should have considered it wrong to have finished the Frieze before the room for its accommodation and the funds for its completion were available.”

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

“In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color.”

“In my childhood I always felt that I was treated unjustly, without a mother, sick, and with the threat of punishment in Hell hanging over my head.”

“It was always my intention that The Frieze should be housed in a room which would provide a suitable architectural frame for it.”

“Just as Leonardo da Vinci studied human anatomy and dissected corpses, so I try to dissect souls.”

“Love is a divine feeling and every new infatuation necessarily carries within it a shadow of sadness because of the parts of one's self that is given to the object of passion.”

“My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are? ... my art gives meaning to my life.”

“My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings.”