"Scream" is back on frame

The famous painting by the Norwegian expressionist will be shown to visitors of the Munch Museum tomorrow

It took restorers almost two years to restore the famous paintings of the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch “Madonna” and “The Scream”. The paintings, which were stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo in 2004 and discovered only in 2006, and in very poor condition, were returned yesterday to the hall where they were previously exhibited. However, the hall will open to visitors only on May 23, said the head of the museum’s council, Gro Ballas. Moreover, experts will discover changes in the attribution of one of the four versions of “The Scream” exhibited at the Munch Museum - it now dates back to 1910, and not 1893, as before.

These works by Munch suffered the fate of many famous paintings, in which the public of a certain type sees not so much artistic as financial value - paintings, estimated by experts at more than $130 million, became the prey of the raiders. And in general, for some reason, the paintings of the famous Norwegian expressionist are highly valued in the criminal world. Over the past decade, various of his paintings have regularly appeared in the crime reports of the Norwegian police. But at the Munch Museum, the swindlers acted surprisingly brazenly. As Lenta.ru recalls, on August 22, 2004, masked people entered the museum building, where, threatening with pistols, they neutralized the guards and, in front of the amazed visitors, removed several paintings from the walls, including “The Scream” and “Madonna,” and disappeared into a waiting room. at the entrance of a black Audi.

The Oslo authorities never received offers to buy the paintings, as was the case in 1994, when another version of the long-suffering “Scream” disappeared (however, then they also did not make a deal with the criminals, and the painting was returned during a special operation with decoy buyers). Information about the paintings did not surface on the black market either. Therefore, the leaders of the Munch Museum were even forced to contact the criminals through the Norwegian media, literally begging them to be careful with the works of the “father” of expressionism, and certainly not to destroy them as evidence if the police were on the trail. It took the police a little over a year to identify the perpetrators of the crime; already at the end of 2005, charges of kidnapping were brought against five Norwegians. All of them denied their involvement in this high-profile raid, but later the court found it proven that one of the suspects drove a black car, another planned the action, and the third took part in it. The hijackers were sentenced to prison terms ranging from five and a half to nine and a half years. Two more detainees were acquitted. But the triumph of justice that took place in May 2006 did not bring the triumph of museum workers any closer - the paintings were never discovered. The Oslo administration even expressed its readiness to pay 2 million crowns for information about the whereabouts of “The Scream” and “Madonna.”

The police reported that the paintings had been found in August 2006. Details of the operation were not disclosed, but it was stated that no ransom was paid for the Scream. Judging by the condition of the paintings, the conditions of their storage were by no means museum-quality - scratches and traces of moisture were clearly visible on the surface, the edges were torn. It was not possible to return the paintings to their original appearance without resorting to, as museum representatives put it, “irreversible actions” in two years. Therefore, it was decided to leave a dark spot in the lower left corner of “Scream” as a “memento” of the misadventure.

But during the restoration, experts were able to discover some facts that indicate that this particular version of the painting is 17 years younger than the very first one from the National Gallery. It was painted in 1893 and, like the entire series of works “The Edge of Life,” is a unique reflection of the psychological state of the artist, who at that moment was experiencing severe depression caused by the death of his mother and sister. Now representatives of the Munch Museum claim that an analysis of the paint and brushstrokes on the found “Scream” indicates that a more accurate date for writing this “Scream” is 1910.

The head of the board of the Munch Museum in Oslo, Gro Ballas, is ready to open restored paintings by the “father” of expressionism to the general public tomorrow

Fedor SEREBRYANSKY