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Vincent van Gogh. Who was he?. Vincent was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot- Zundert in the south of the Netherlands. His father was a minister. His whole family worked as either ministers or in the arts.
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Who was he? • Vincent was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert in the south of the Netherlands. • His father was a minister. His whole family worked as either ministers or in the arts. • While growing up he decided he wanted be a missionary and moved to Belgium to work in a mining village with the people there.
Who was he? • However, after working there for a short time, he failed. The priests in the area did not like his approach and wouldn’t support him. • He had loved art since he was a child and drew every chance he got. So after a while he decided to work in the arts. • He tried to be an art dealer and then started to make his own art work after his brother, Theo, encouraged him to.
Who was he? • Theo van Gogh encouraged Vincent to take his art seriously and make it a career. So Vincent went to study art under in artist in Brussels Belgium and then went to an art school. • While there Vincent van Gogh learned all of the foundations of art focusing on drawing.
A tragic life • Van Gogh moved around frequently and had several serious arguments with family members. • On top of this, he seemed to fail at everything he wanted to do. He wanted to be a minister and failed schooling, wanted to be a missionary and he wasn’t allowed, went into making art and never managed to make ends meet. • It seemed that everything he tried and wanted to do didn’t work out. • Throughout his life Vincent also dealt with a list of emotional, psychological, and physical ailments. • Epilepsy • Schizophrenia • Depression • Severe inner ear infections • Anxiety
His influences (Japanese prints) • Van Gogh was strongly influenced by the unrealistic perspective of Japanese prints.
His influences (Impressionism) • Van Gogh was strongly influenced by a movement in art called impressionism. • Impressionism is a movement in art where the artists tried to show an impression of the subject matter. The would pay special attention to the way the sunlight and the time of day affected what they were painting. • Claude Monet is the prime example of this.
His artwork • Van Gogh was a part of a movement in art called POST-impressionism. • This movement followed right after impressionism and took what the impressionist artists were about and added more emotion to it. Think of impressionism being more like a scientific study and post-impressionism being more emotional.
His artwork • Van Gogh's artwork is characterized by bright colors, twisted lines, using a lot of paint, and very expressive and bold brush strokes. • He painted every day things, people and places that were around him at the time. When he was in the mining town he would paint people in the mining town. When he lived in the bright and sunny hills of southern France he would paint the scenery accordingly, very bright with a lot of movement. • Van Gogh said about his painting: “Real painters do not paint things as they are...They paint them as they themselves feel them to be". • He did something that had never been done before: he painted his emotions. He painted what he felt. • He used colors that had personal symbolism for him.
His death and legacy • Throughout his art career van Gogh only sold one or two paintings. His brother, Theo, supported him financially (this caused great guilt for van Gogh, another emotional problem). • His brother was also one of the only people who appreciated his art while Vincent was alive. He had failed at being an artist as well. • His mental illnesses, which people did not understand at the time, caused him to be put into an asylum. People did not like him because he was so extreme, so emotional, they didn’t understand his handicap. • On July 29th 1890, at the age of only 37, van Gogh died from a gun shot wound. The most popular opinion is that this was suicide, but this is not proven and no gun was ever found. • In his short career of just over 10 years he made over 2,100 artworks, despite his serious bouts of illness.
What’s the big deal • Why study an artist who was a failure? • Vincent may not have had success in his life. But it did not take long after he died for his paintings to be incredible successful. His fame started to build among colleagues before his death, and afterword's, within just 15 years, there were posthumous shows of van Gogh’s work all over the world: Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, Paris, and more. • By the mid 1900’s he was considered one of the most significant painters in history.
Who/what he influenced • Vincent van Gogh has been called the father of modern painting. There are clear influences in a long list of artists and art movements includingExpressionism, German Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Fauvism, and more. • From now on every painter we study has been influenced by van Gogh in some way or another.
