| Vincent van Gogh Paintings
Artworks |
|
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
|
Vincent Willem van Gogh (March 30, 1853 in Zundert – July 29, 1890 in
Auvers-sur-Oise) was a Dutch draughtsman and painter, classified as a
Post-Impressionist. His paintings and drawings include some of the
world's best known, most popular and most expensive pieces. He suffered
from recurrent bouts of mental illness — about which there are many
competing theories — and during one such episode, famously cut off a
part of his left ear.
Van Gogh spent his early life working for a firm of art dealers, and
after a brief spell as a teacher, became a missionary worker in a very
poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until
1880, at the age of 27. Initially he worked in somber colors, until an
encounter in Paris with Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism accelerated
his artistic development. He produced all of his more than 2,000 works,
including around 900 paintings and 1100 drawings or sketches, during
the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were
produced in the final two years of his life, and in the two months
before his death he created ninety paintings.
The central figure in Vincent van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, an
art dealer with the firm of Goupil & Cie, who continually and
selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is
documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards,
which were published in 1914, by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Theo's widow,
who generously supported most of the early Van Gogh exhibitions with
loans from the artist's estate.
Van Gogh has been acknowledged as a pioneer of what came to be known as
Expressionism and has had an enormous influence on 20th century art,
especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists, with a line that
continues through to the Abstract Expressionism of Willem de Kooning
and the British painter Francis Bacon. |
