Birth Year : 1853
Death Year : 1890
Country : Netherlands
Vincent van Gogh, for whom color was the chief symbol of expression,
was born in Groot-Zundest, Holland. The son of a pastor, brought up in
a religious and cultured atmosphere, Vincent was highly emotional and lacked
self-confidence. Between 1860 and 1880, when he finally decided to become
an artist, van Gogh had had two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had
worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a
preacher in the Borinage (a dreary mining district in Belgium), where he
was dismissed for overzealousness. He remained in Belgium to study art,
determined to give happiness by creating beauty. The works of his early
Dutch period are somber-toned, sharply lit, genre paintings of which the
most famous is "The Potato Eaters" (1885). In that year van Gogh went to
Antwerp where he discovered the works of Rubens
and purchased many Japanese prints.
In 1886 he went to Paris
to join his brother Théo, the manager of Goupil's gallery. In Paris,
van Gogh studied with Cormon, inevitably met Pissarro,
Monet, and Gauguin,
and began to lighten his very dark palette and to paint in the short brushstrokes
of the Impressionists. His nervous temperament made him a difficult companion
and night-long discussions combined with painting all day undermined his
health. He decided to go south to Arles where he hoped his friends would
join him and help found a school of art. Gauguin
did join him but with disastrous results. In a fit of epilepsy, van Gogh
pursued his friend with an open razor, was stopped by Gauguin,
but ended up cutting his own ear off. Van Gogh then began to alternate
between fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy
for treatment.
In May of 1890, he seemed much better and
went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise under the watchful eye of Dr. Gachet. Two
months later he was dead, having shot himself "for the good of all." During
his brief career he had sold one painting. Van Gogh's finest works were
produced in less than three years in a technique that grew more and more
impassioned in brushstroke, in symbolic and intense color, in surface tension,
and in the movement and vibration of form and line. Van Gogh's inimitable
fusion of form and content is powerful; dramatic, lyrically rhythmic, imaginative,
and emotional, for the artist was completely absorbed in the effort to
explain either his struggle against madness or his comprehension of the
spiritual essence of man and nature.
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Vincent
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