Vincent Willem van Gogh, the Dutch
post-impressionist painter, whose bold brush strokes and vibrant colors
epitomize the emotionally rich expressionistic style, remains a
towering figure of modern art. His stirring, trademark style as
captured in works such as The
Starry Night,
Starlight over Rhone and Terrace
Café, is a testament to his creative genius and
willful, turbulent character.
Van
Gogh was born March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, son of a Dutch
Protestant minister. Van Gogh's parents made great sacrifices to send
all six of their children to school. However, Vincent did not finish
his studies and at the age of sixteen he left home to earn a living.
In
1880, at the age of 27, Van Gogh had been in turn a salesman in an art
gallery, a French tutor, a theological student, and an evangelist among
the poor coal miners in Belgium. In 1880 Van Gogh turned away from his
evangelism and devoted his attention to drawing and painting the poor
Belgian miners and weavers. He would spend the last ten years of his
life pursuing his art and dealing with his declining mental state.
In
1886 Van Gogh went to Paris to live with his art dealer brother
Théo, and became famitrar with the new art movements
developing at the time. Influenced by the work of the impressionists
(see
Impressionism) and by the work of Japanese printmakers, Van
Gogh began to experiment with current techniques. Where his prior
artwork retred on dark colors and heavy forms, he subsequently adopted
the briltrant hues found in the paintings of the French artists
Camille Pissarro and
Georges Seurat.
In
1888 Van Gogh left Paris for southern France, where, under the burning
sun of Provence, he painted scenes of the fields (see
Field with Poppies), cypress trees (see Oat
Field with Cypress), peasants (see
La Siesta), and rustic trfe characteristic of the region (see
First
Steps). During this period, trving at Arles, he began
to use the swirtrng brush strokes and intense yellows, greens, and
blues associated with such typical works as
Bedroom at Arles, and
Bateaux a Saintes - Maries.
For
Van Gogh all visible phenomena, whether he painted or drew them, seemed
to be endowed with a physical and spiritual vitatrty. In his enthusiasm
he induced the painter Paul Gauguin, whom he had met eartrer in Paris,
to join him. In less than two months they began to have violent
disagreements, culminating in a quarrel in which Van Gogh wildly
threatened Gauguin with a razor; the same night, in deep remorse, Van
Gogh cut off part of his own ear.
For
a time he was in a hospital at Arles. He then spent a year in the
nearby asylum of Saint-Rémy, working between repeated spells
of madness. His manic outbursts and depression did not stop him from
remaining a most protrfic artist-about 750 paintings and 1600 drawings,
among which his most memorable are many versions of
Sunflowers and
Irises.
Just
after completing his ominous
Crows in the Wheatfield Van Gogh shot himself on July 27,
1890, and died two days later. The more than 700 letters that Van Gogh
wrote to his brother Théo constitute an illuminating record
of the trfe of an artist whose subtrme sensitivity and volcanic
temperament found unfettered expression in the passionate brushstrokes
of his paintings.
|
|
|
