The 10 Creepiest Paintings of All-Time

Image via Complex Original

Artist: Alison Schulnik
Year: 2008

The muddied colors and mucky textures in the painting add a scatological dimension to an already dismal scene of a hobo clown and his dog.  The bedraggled pair are so down and out they seem to drip and melt off the canvas.  The dark palette and dense paint also create a dark and dense psychological element that sets a troubling mood.

Artist: Mark Ryden
Year: 2003

Ryden's work is that special blend of Children of the Corn creepy and acid trip creepy and pedophile creepy.  Add the classic horror effect of spurting blood and a body holding its own head, plus a dash of that je ne sais quoi, and it all adds up to just really really undeniably creepy.

Artist: Francis Bacon
Year: 1948

Bacon's screaming, exploding,and decapitated portraits of Innocent X may seem like the more obvious choice, but this earlier canvas is worse than all of them. Just a shriveled little mouth sits where the head should be, as if it were the only mangled remain that would be found in the detritus of all the exploding and shrieking popes that would come after it.

Artist: Jean Dubuffet
Year: 1950

Dubuffet famously coined the term Art Brut or “raw art” to describe non-traditional or untrained arts like graffiti, children’s art, or art of the mentally ill.  But “raw” is also apt to describe his own work - this splayed and flattened figure is composed of thick paint mixed with sand and dirt, giving it the look and feel of roadkill smashed into the concrete.  Despite the body’s unfortunate situation, its skeleton head has a satisfied smile, creating an eerie and uncomfortable dissonance between the mangled body and its apparent expression.

Artist: Otto Dix
Year: 1924

A gruesomely mangled body is a creepy subject, but rendered in Dix’s graphic, almost comic-bookish style, the contrast is doubly unnerving.  Dix was deeply affected by his own experiences in the military in World War I and spent a fair amount of his career depicting war’s brutalities. This Wounded Soldier appears to be the living dead, his body contorted as his skeletal face looks out at us in anguish and desperation.

See also:  Otto Dix, War Triptych, 1929-32

Artist: Odilon Redon
Year: 1881

After serving in the French army during the Franco-Prussian War, Redon moved to Paris and started working in charcoal.  In what was the “city of light” to most people, Redon produced the darkest images of his oeuvre, what he called his “noirs”, including The Crying Spider, a giant, Neanderthal-ish face with seemingly hollow eyes, attached to the fat, hairy body of a spider.  If you weren’t arachnophobic before, you should be now.

Artist: Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son
Year: 1819-23

Goya was always a bit noir, but he became especially dark toward the end of his life as his physical and mental health deteriorated – he became deaf and suffered from vertigo and tinnitus (some think he had Meniere’s disease, as well as possible lead poisoning from his paints).  So, like any gentleman of a certain age would do, he bought himself a house in the country and painted the walls with enormous murals of witches and cannibals and goblins. In Saturn Devouring his Son, Saturn’s eyes are wide and manic as he munches on his son’s arm.  Forget meeting this guy in a dark alley, you don’t want to meet him in the isolated house of some crazy old painter either.

Artist: Théodor Géricault
Years: Both 1818-1819

In order to perfect his prowess at painting the human body, Gericault felt that he needed real human body parts to work from. So, he made a deal with a mortician and borrowed some cadaver bits, then proceeded to paint these disturbing oil sketches. The limp hands and feet are piled up like a dish at thanksgiving dinner, while the heads have just enough individuality left in them to almost be portraits, but the bloody sheet makes it clear that this is a still life instead.

Artist: Salvator Rosa
Year: 1645

In the legend, St. Anthony made a pilgrimage to the desert to live as a monk, and on his way faced a series of evil temptations and terrible demons.  This has made for ripe subject matter over the centuries, especially in eras when most art was commissioned by the church and so glorifying religious imagery dominated.   Painting the demons and devils in St. Anthony’s story must have been a welcome change of pace, almost a way to let loose, for these artists.  Do a quick Google search for “the Temptation of St. Anthony” and you’ll see how twisted and bizarre they can be.  But Rosa's version tops them all, as he shows Anthony fallen, now at the mercy of a merciless beast.

See also Temptation of St. Anthony (from left to right) paintings by Matthias Grunewald, Joos Van Craesbeeck, and Max Ernst.

Artist: Caravaggio
Year: c. 1597

A screaming severed head hurtling through the air is scary, period. This one has her eyes wide open, issuing both a challenge and a threat that says "I'm coming for you”, and her open mouth lets you know, “If one of these snakes on my head doesn’t bite you, I will.”