Hold your breath before The Scream of Munch, or it will disappear forever

The Cry of Munch, loses little by little of its substance. A color in particular is deteriorating, the yellow was used to paint the sunset and a part of the character. Facing the challenge of preserving the masterpiece of the Norwegian painter, preserved in the Munch Museum in Oslo, a team of scientists from europe, the usa and brazil have looked into the subject. They have focused their efforts on one of five versions of the Scream painted by the Norwegian painter between 1893 and 1910.

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Their findings are clear: if the color yellow always loses most of its substance, it's the fault of the artist himself. Apparently, Munch has used a tube of yellow cadmium of poor quality, we learn the Guardian .

New advanced

"The yellow paint was rich in chlorinated compounds and this, precisely in the places where the paint is damaged," said professor Koen Janssens, university of Antwerp, everyday English. I don't think it was an intentional use. We are in 1910, and at that time, the industry producing the pigments that the chemical was not performing as well as today."

anyway, the color tends to fade and flake off more rapidly in the presence of moisture, even in small quantities, such as that contained in the air exhaled by the visitors. This discovery is a new step forward for the group of experts who first suspected the light to be the cause of the deterioration of the work. "It turned out that the light is not really very harmful to the table," said Janssens.

The solution is more on the side of the moisture they need at any price reduce for the preservation of the work. The Munch museum of Oslo is moving in the next few months in a location that will ensure best conservation conditions. The table will then be installed in a space lit normally but with a humidity level of 45%, with the hope of slowing the deterioration of the work, we learn from the press agency Belga News.

"It will take away the audience of the painting, so that he could contemplate it without the release of the air directly on its surface, advocates Koen Janssens. The social distancing applied to the item

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