August Strindberg

#about

He was that kind of friend who would show up to a dinner party with a thundercloud over his head and a burning desire to debate the meaning of existence, while also possibly suspecting the host of poisoning the soup.

A Norwegian painter and a Swedish writer met for the first time in Berlin. Both were rising stars in their fields at the moment. They quickly found common interests in literature, arts, theatre, and psychology, and established a friendship.

In a few years, they met again, now in Paris.
It was spring, but none of the two men felt inspired – the painter was gathering himself after having lost his younger brother to pneumonia, the writer was going through a crisis which would then result in depression and paranoia. The game changer was their mutual unawareness of each other’s real state of affairs and that of minds. Thus, when in a few months the painter notified August Strindberg that he had his friend’s new portrait ready, the writer was surprised, to say the least. There was already his portrait painted by this very artist after their first meeting, it was good enough, and nobody had asked for a slightest update…

When Strindberg saw the portrait, the degree to which he was surprised went even higher. The portrait was black-and-white, featured a naked woman weaved into the painted frame, and was signed with his, A. Strindberg’s, name misspelled. Strindberg, to whom this friendship reminded about Berlin and for whom Berlin became associated with devastating love affairs, was not ready to go into details of the painter’s choices – he just believed his former friend was going to get rid of him.

Well, the portrait was soon fixed by its author.
The friendship? Not from the writer’s side.

The name of the artist was Edvard Munch, the one who had authored The Scream by that time .