He may be forever associated with an angst-ridden image which adorns many a piece of merchandising in art gallery shops around the world, but as a new exhibition is about to reveal, there is so much more to Edvard Munch than The Scream.

Edvard Munch: Graphic Works From The Gundersen Collection goes on display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh from next Saturday, and its presence in Scotland is something of a coup for our national gallery. This private collection of lithographs and woodcuts by the celebrated Norwegian artist is being shown for the first time in the UK after visiting Caen and Bergen. After its Edinburgh run, it travels to Denmark.

Munch, who lived from 1863-1944, made several versions of The Scream, which was part of his series The Frieze Of Life, in which he explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia and anxiety. Included in his Scream portfolio were two hand-coloured versions. One is held in the Munch Museum, Oslo; the other is in the Gundersen Collection and will be included in the Scottish show.

Senior curator Lucy Askew cannot contain her excitement at the arrival of the show in Edinburgh. "I went to see it in Caen and met Mr Gundersen, who is passionate about making this collection available to people around the world. This exhibition shows Munch's extraordinarily innovative approach.

"Printmaking is an integral part of the way he works and he made multiple variations of images. He knew that a different approach to an image could change its emotive impact. For Munch, printmaking was as much about getting his work seen as being a commercial decision."

Norwegian businessman Pål Georg Gundersen has been collecting Munch's work since 1990, when he acquired a print of The Sick Child. "When you are born in Norway, you meet Edvard Munch early in life, at school," he explains. "I have collected prints from what I feel are Munch's golden years: 1895-1902. In this period he produced all his important works, including the complete Frieze Of Life. In my opinion The Frieze Of Life tells you everything important about Edvard Munch and his work."

Through multiple versions of many of the images, the exhibition investigates Munch's experimentation as he revisited and reworked subjects to heighten their emotive impact and to explore colour, texture and techniques. This collection shows the working processes behind some of the best-known images of the late 19th and early 20th century. Visitors will be able to compare three different versions of Munch's Madonna series and five examples of Vampire II (originally known as Pain And Love) from 1895.

Munch was born in Norway in 1863. His father, Christian, was a doctor who married Laura Bjølstad, a family friend's maid, when he was 44 and she was 23. Munch's mother died of tuberculosis when he was just five years old. He and his siblings were raised by her younger sister, but tragedy struck again when his older sister, Johanne Sophie, also died of TB in 1877. He was 14; she was 16.

As well as frequently printing his own subjects, Munch worked with master printers in Paris and Berlin, where he spent much of his time over the turn of the 20th century and where his work was regularly exhibited. This latest exhibition is supplemented with prints by Munch which are held on long-term loan by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art from two other private collectors. It will also feature a display on the legacy of Munch's first solo exhibition in the UK (staged in Edinburgh by the Scottish Society of Artists in 1931) and exploring how his work has been received in Scotland.

In addition, works by other artists from the gallery's permanent collection will be shown on the ground floor at Modern Two, in displays introducing the European context in which Munch was active and highly influential, particularly in the realms of Symbolism and Expressionism.

Edvard Munch: Graphic Works From The Gundersen Collection is at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Two, Edinburgh (0131 624 6200, www.nationalgalleries.org) from April 7-September 23