A biography for Edvard Munchhasn’t been written yet.
“The rich man who gives, steals twice over. First he steals the money and then the hearts of men.”
“When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.”
“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.”
“No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.”
“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.”
“Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.”
“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.”
“To die is as if one's eyes had been put out and one cannot see anything any more. Perhaps it is like being shut in a cellar. One is abandoned by all. They have slammed the door and are gone. One does not see anything and notices only the damp smell of putrefaction.”
“Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.”
“In common with Michelangelo and Rembrandt I am more interested in the line, its rise and fall, than in color.”
“Some colors reconcile themselves to one another, others just clash.”