Bankrupt Heir of Shipping Tycoon Sells Norway's Largest Private Munch Collection to Pay Off $75 Million in Debts

Norway has put up for sale one of the country's largest collections of paintings by artist Edvard Munch. The works are being sold by Petter Olsen, a businessman, heir to a shipping business and collector who has been declared bankrupt.

Bloomberg writes about it.

Olsen calls his collection ‘the largest private collection of Munch in Norway’. In particular, it includes several self-portraits of the country's most famous artist.

12 years ago, in 2012, the collector already sold one of Munch's works from his collection. It was one of four copies of Munch's most famous work, The Scream. At the time, it was sold for $119.9 million. This made it the most expensive work of art sold at auction at the time.

Olsen, 76, used to be one of the richest men in Norway. In 1996, he was worth 4.5 billion kroner. In 2001, he sued his elder brother, shipping magnate Fred, for half of Munch's 34 paintings, which were then estimated at 1 billion kroner (about $95 million).

Earlier this month, it became known that the businessman's fortune was negatively affected by unprofitable investments in real estate, including a museum in Munch's homeland. He currently owes creditors about 780 million kronor ($75 million). Because of this, Olsen decided to sell off his valuable paintings. So far, the details of the upcoming sale have not been disclosed.

The director of the Munch Museum in Oslo, Tone Hansen, said that the institution is interested in purchasing the paintings, but does not have the funds to do so.

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian painter and graphic artist, one of the most prominent modernist artists and a pioneer of expressionism. He was an innovative artist in a number of aspects, in particular, in the special technique he developed, in which he was the first to use colour graphics.

Munch's works are kept in many museums around the world, primarily in Norway - in the Munch Museum and the National Gallery (Oslo), which opened in 1963. They are also exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Musée d'Orsay (Paris), the New Pinakothek (Munich), the National Gallery of Scotland (Edinburgh), etc.

One of Munch's most famous works is the expressionist painting The Scream, which became iconic for mass culture in the late twentieth century. It depicts a human figure agonising in terror against the backdrop of a blood-red sky and the landscape of the Oslo fjord. The artist created four versions of this painting using different techniques. Due to its popularity, The Scream has been repeatedly targeted for kidnapping.