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| | Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890) was a Dutch painter and graphic artist and is an outstanding representative of post-impressionism along with Cezanne and Gauguin. During lifetime, only one painting was sold. Poverty, alcoholism and episodes of mental illness led the artist to commit suicide. Though Van Gogh's creative life continued for only 10 years, it was extraordinarily successful: 800 paintings were made by the painter. His early works, representing predominantly life of peasants, are sombre enough with respect to color and mood. However, after moving to Paris in 1886, when the artist was under the influence of impressionism and Japanese color engraving on wood ("The Guilty World"), his works became brighter with respect to coloring and more varied in regard to subjects - landscapes, portraits and still-life. If mainly color interested the impressionists as a means of conveying the nature but for Van Gogh, who wrote by wide vortex-like strokes, it was a symbol of expressive means. In 1888, artist moved to Arles, where he created many paintings but suffered from frequent nervous breakdowns, hallucinations and depression episodes. Gauguin visited Van Gogh and once they quarreled and in madness, Van Gogh cut-off portion of his ear. For the last 70 days of his life, he painted 70 pictures. After the death, fame of the artist quickly grew. Emotional depth of his creativity made huge impact on art of 20th century, particularly on fauvism and an expressionism.
In 1880, Van Gogh took to art, visited Academy of arts in Brussels (1880—1881) and Antwerp (1885—1886), used advices of painter Anton Mauve in Hague and excitedly painted miners, peasants and craftsmen. In a series of paintings and etudes of middle of 1880s (“Peasant”, 1885, Otterlo, Kroller-Muller Museum; “The Potato Eaters”, 1885, Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum), painted in dark picturesque gamut, marked with acute painful perception of human sufferings and feelings of depression, the artist recreates anguish atmosphere of psychological intensity.
In 1886—1888, Van Gogh lived in Paris, visited private art studio, studied impressionism painting, Japanese engraving and Paul Gauguin's synthetic creations. During this period, Van Gogh's palette became bright, earth colors disappeared and pure blue, golden-yellow and red shade colors appeared, characteristic for his dynamic, as though, streaming strokes (“Siene with the Pont da la Granda Jette”, 1887, Amsterdam, Van Gogh State museum; “Portrait of Pere Tanguy”, 1887, Paris, Rodin Museum).
In 1888 Van Gogh moved to Arles, where originality of his creativity was finally defined. The ardent art temperament, painful impulse to harmony, beauty and happiness and simultaneously, fears before forces, hostile to person, find an embodiment in shining solar colors of the south landscapes (“Harvest at La Crau with MontMajour in the background”, 1888, Amsterdam, Van Gogh State museum), in ominous images, reminding a night nightmare (“Night café”, 1888, private meeting, New York); dynamics of colors and strokes fill with spiritual life and movement, not only to nature and people, occupying it (“The Red Vineyard in Arles”, 1888, A.S. Pushkin’s State museum of fine arts, Moscow), but also inanimate objects (“The Bedroom of Van Gogh in Arles”, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh's State museum, Amsterdam).
In last years, tense works of Van Gogh was accompanied with episodes of mental illness, which forced him to admit into mental hospital in Arles, then in Saint – Remy (1889—1890) and in Auvers - Sur- Oise, where he committed suicide on July 27, 1890 by lethal pistol shot. According to his brother Theo, who was with Vincent during his final moments, these were last words of artist: La tristesse durera toujours (“the Grief will last eternally”) |
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Past Sunday artists around the world celebrated
the 155th birthday of Vincent Willem van Gogh. The Dutch Post-Impressionist artist who produced some of the world's most famous and most expensive art pieces spent all his lite as a poor man. After trying careers as an art dealer, teacher, and even a preacher, Van Gogh became a self-taught artist at the age of 27 and produced over 2000 works in his life time, the most famous ones in his last two years.
Ironically his art was unpopular at the time, Van Gogh hardly sold any of his works during his life, and lived as a "starving artist" relying on a modest monthly support from his brother Theo.
