Stolen ‘Scream’ is recovered

Two years after the brazen daylight theft of national artistic treasures from a museum in Oslo, police announced Thursday they recovered the Edvard Munch masterpieces “The Scream” and “Madonna.”

“I saw the paintings myself today, and there was far from the damage that could have been feared,” said Iver Stensrud, the police inspector who has headed the investigation since the paintings were taken by masked gunmen who raided the Munch Museum on Aug. 22, 2004.

Experts from the museum confirmed that the paintings, still shielded from the public and the news media, were the real thing.

“The Scream” is probably the best known work in Munch’s emotionally charged style, which was a major influence in the birth of the Expressionist movement. Its waif-like figure, apparently screaming or hearing a scream, has become a modern icon of human anxiety.

Even though Munch, who died in 1944 at age 80, had painted three other versions of “The Scream,” his fellow Norwegians were heartbroken over the theft, and news of its return was greeted with relief and joy. “I am almost crying from happiness,” said Gro Balas, chairwoman of the museum board.

Stensrud said authorities believed the paintings had been in Norway the whole time. But he was cagey at a news conference in Oslo about how the paintings were recovered, saying only that “the pictures came into our hands this afternoon after a successful police action.”