The Hands

A young woman, her back exposed, stands isolated in a pitch-black space.

Surrounding her, countless pale hands reach out greedily from the depths of the darkness.

The year is 1895.

Edvard Munch was active in Berlin, based at the salon 'Zum schwarzen Ferkel' (The Black Piglet).

There, he engaged in decadent discussions almost every night with playwright August Strindberg, writer Stanisław Przybyszewski, and their muse, Dagny Juel.

Society at the time was rife with a twisted view of gender, simultaneously revering women as sacred 'saints' while also seeing them as 'femmes fatales' who drained men's vitality.

In such an era, Munch gazed upon primitive human desires, the domination by others, and the psychological isolation that accompanied it.

This work was conceived as a pivotal piece in his series The Frieze of Life, which explored existential human emotions.

It was first unveiled in March 1895 at an exhibition of modern painting held at the Hugo Baroccio Gallery in Berlin.