In what year was "The Scream" first created?

Edvard Munch first created “The Scream” in 1893. The earliest versions belong to a burst of work in which he transformed a remembered moment of fear into one of modern art’s most recognizable images.

Munch described walking with two friends at sunset when the sky seemed to turn blood red. He wrote that he felt an “infinite scream” passing through nature. The account became closely associated with the picture, although the work is not simply a literal record of a landscape event.

The 1893 date applies to both an early pastel version and the first painted version. Munch later revisited the composition: another pastel dates from 1895, and a second painted version from 1910. These are separate versions of the same basic composition, not evidence that the original was made in 1910.

The image was first publicly exhibited in 1893 alongside works connected with Munch’s Frieze of Life. Its red sky, diagonal bridge, and skeletal central figure helped establish the emotional language that later Expressionist artists expanded.