Anxiety

A crowd with pallid, death-like faces.
They stare at us.
Above them, undulating thin lines are drawn across the sky.

January 1892.
While staying in Nice, Munch recorded an experience in his diary.

It was dusk, and he was walking with two friends.
Suddenly, the sky turned blood red.
At that moment, he felt a 'great, infinite scream' tearing through nature.

The location was Ekeberg Hill, southeast of Christiania.
Below, the deep blue fjord and city lights stretched out.
From this intense memory, The Scream was born.

However.
His inner terror did not end there.

Munch placed the urban crowd within the undulations of nature.
When exhibited in Paris in 1896, critics called them:
'Wandering fetuses.'

In a rapidly urbanizing society.
People, freed from tradition, yet gasped with intense isolation and alienation.