"I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream."
1853-1890 Dutch Post Impressionist painter
His work has influenced virtually every visual artist that came after him. In 1869, he worked for a firm of art dealers and at various 'temp' jobs. From 1878 to 1880 he was an evangelist. He worked with a very impoverished people. He made the mistake of giving the food he was issued to the people to whom he was preaching. His supervisors reprimanded him for this. Later he decided he'd rather be an artist.
One of his first great, early influences was Rembrandt van Rijn who provided the early dark palette of colors. He was also influenced by Jean-Francois Millet.
He was very dependent on his brother Theo who gave him moral and financial support for years. It was Theo who bankrolled Vincent's move to Paris in February of 1886. The world is much blessed by the series of letters between Vincent and Theo which give enormous insight into the artist's thinking.
His first attempt at a masterpiece was The Potato Eaters in 1885.
In Paris, he had his first exposure to Impressionist and Post Impressionist painters. He made friends with Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. This was the best part of his life. It was then that he learned the pleasures of L'absinth.
At the end of his year in Paris, he moved away from the community in up to the Provence city of Arles. There he worked in relative isolation. Later he made an arrangement with Paul Gauguin to share a cottage in the south of France. It was Theo who was paying the rent. Among the paintings done during this period were The Night Cafe and The Starry Night which is located in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). During this time, 1888-1889 in Arles he is suspected of suffering from Digoxin Poisoning. This may explain the visualizations in the paintings of his later period.
His work made it to the American shores during the Armory Show 1913 and was subsequently shown at Gallery 291.
Long after he died, in the 1930's, his work was displayed in the infamous Entartete Kunst which was a show intended to delineate what the Nazi's though of as "degenerate art".
There was a large travelling retrospective of his work called Van Gogh's Van Goghs sponsored by the Van Gogh Museum.
Some of his works include:
In his lifetime, he sold exactly one painting. He died at the age of 37. He had produced most of his work in 29 months of frenetic activity. This includes about 800 paintings and about the same number of drawings. In 1990 a painting of the portrait of his friend, Dr Gachet sold for $82.5 Million US dollars.
His work is owned by every major art museum in the world, including:
Related Nodes:
Sources:
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gogh/
http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/
http://www.artmuseum.net/vangogh/gateway.asp
Last Updated 05.30.04