At first, the painting was perceived as a slap in the face to public taste.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Edvard Munch's mental health was under threat. A disorderly lifestyle, excessive alcohol consumption, and problems with women, in particular his breakup with Tulla Larsen, exacerbated the artist's condition. He underwent treatment in clinics on several occasions, but this did little to help.

At the same time, he developed his approach to painting, which could be described as a kind of therapy. Around 1890, Munch turned to symbolism. In his landscapes, nature becomes a reflection of the emotional state of a person, a mirror of their soul. The Scream is one of Munch's many attempts to convey his impressions of natural phenomena. The artist wrote: "In a tense state of mind, a landscape will make a certain impression on a person. By depicting this landscape, the artist will arrive at an image of his mood. It is this mood that is the main thing — nature is only a means.“

There is no work of art in which the existential, primal fear of man is captured more impressively than in ”The Scream." A genderless creature with a frightened expression on its face wanders across a bridge leading into the depths of the painting. The artist sought to express his innermost feelings, rejecting already known styles and trends. His painting methods are radical: the frontality of the figure, extreme perspective, a landscape that seems to dissolve in a whirlpool of lines.

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Munch described the essence of the central image in his diary: "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 against a fence—I looked at the blood and tongues of flame above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends went on ahead, while I stood there, trembling with excitement, feeling an endless scream piercing through nature." The artist did not seek to draw a figure; he painted the sound, the state, the idea of universal unity.

It is possible that the crimson color of the sky is not an exaggeration. Munch may have actually seen this color. In 1883, the most powerful eruption of the Krakatoa volcano occurred. A huge amount of ash was thrown into the atmosphere, causing particularly colorful, fiery sunsets to be observed around the world for several years.
It is quite possible that the scream Munch heard was not some idea or hallucination. Oslo's largest slaughterhouse and a psychiatric clinic were located near Ekeberg. The screams of slaughtered animals, along with the cries of the mentally ill, were unbearable.

Munch was known for returning to the same subjects many times. There are about 40 versions of “The Scream”: four of them are paintings (they appeared between 1893 and 1910), the rest are graphic works (including prints and drawings). There are also variations in composition and imagery.

The Scream was first presented to the public at an exhibition in Berlin in December 1893. It was conceived as part of The Frieze of Life, a programmatic series of paintings about the spiritual life of man. Munch wrote that “The Frieze of Life” was conceived "as a series of interconnected paintings, which together should give a description of a whole life. A winding coastline runs through the painting, behind it is the sea, always in motion, and under the crowns of the trees is a diverse life with its sorrows and joys. The frieze is conceived as a poem about life, love, and death."

The public was perplexed as to how such a terrible painting could be possible. However, it was this work that became programmatic for expressionism. It brought piercing loneliness and despair to art, becoming prophetic.