Munch’s The Scream Puzzle – 1000 pieces

The first example of Munch’s expressionism is found in Munch’s painting Sick Girl , where the artist recalls the agony and premature death of his little sister Sophie.
The scene depicts a red-haired girl in bed, her back resting on a huge white pillow. Nearby, perhaps kneeling, is a female figure with her head bowed.

The two figures are silent. The girl opens a glassy, ​​hallucinatory eye, a harbinger of misfortune, and her left hand is caressed by those of the woman. The intertwining of these hands, outlined with a few, rapid strokes of color, is not at all random: anyone can see how it falls perfectly at the intersection of the two hypothetical diagonals, therefore at the geometric center of the painting.
The room’s perspective is narrow. The bed seems squeezed between the bedside table and a wall, draped with a greenish curtain.
The air is heavy, almost stale. Munch wants us to smell the illness, the stuffiness, the pungent aromas of syrups and medicines. The only light comes from the pillow and the girl’s pale face.

But it doesn’t look like reflected light: it’s as if the pillowcase and the skin were emitting their own intrinsic, ghostly luminescence.

In place of the naturalistic description of the bodies, the artist substitutes simple color sketches, outside of any previously experimented rule; even all the conventions of academic drawing and highlighting are transgressed.

Munch’s representational intentions are new and different. He wants to represent feelings, not material things, and even the characters are nothing more than shells of passions or anguish.