Painters throughout the history of art have used canvases as an extension of their own emotions or anxieties. Themes such as death, fear, pain and suffering return insistently, accompanied by a codified iconography that has been revived throughout the history of art.
Artists from the Renaissance to Impressionism, via Street Art, have used different techniques and styles to portray the dark Moti dell’Anima. The hyperrealism of macabre subjects, the power of black as the cancellation of any form of hope or happiness, but also abstract subjects that come out of the imagination of a dreamlike nightmare.
In the week in which chilling and fear have been commercialized as a popular holiday, and Halloween skulls, along with pumpkins, are everywhere, here are 10 distressing works that seem perfect for the night of October 31.
There will be amputated limbs, decaying faces, cannibalistic mythological creatures, and electric chairs reinterpreted by one of the masters of Pop Art. Just the right amount of pre-Halloween creepiness.

Saturn Devouring His Son – Francisco Goya (1821-1823)

A Girl With Death Mask – Frida Kahlo (1938)

Electric Chair – Andy Warhol (1963)

Cabra – Jean-Michel Basquiat (1981-1982)

Anatomical Pieces – Theodore Gericault (circa 1820)

The Face of War – Salvador Dalí (1940)

Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X – Francis Bacon (1953)

Dance of Death – Otto Dix (1917)

Ophelia – John Everett Millais (1851-1852)

Puberty – Edvard Munch (1894-1895)