Vincent Willem van Gogh(Dutch. Vincent Willem van Gogh, March 30, Grotto-Zundert, near Breda, - July 29, Auvers-sur-Oise, France) is a world-famous Dutch and French post-impressionist artist.

Biography

Vincent van Gogh was born at 11 am on March 30, 1853 in the village of Groot Zundert in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, not far from the Belgian border. Vincent's father was Theodor van Gogh, a Protestant pastor, and his mother was Anna Cornelia Carbentus, the daughter of a respected bookbinder and bookseller from The Hague. Vincent was the second of seven children of Theodore and Anna Cornelia. He received his name in honor of his paternal grandfather, who also devoted his whole life to the Protestant church. This name was intended for the first child of Theodore and Anna, who was born a year before Vincent and died on the first day. So Vincent, although he was born the second, became the eldest of the children.

Four years after Vincent's birth, on May 1, 1857, his brother Theodorus van Gogh (Theo) was born. In addition to him, Vincent had a brother Cor (Cornelis Vincent, May 17) and three sisters - Anna Cornelia (February 17), Liz (Elizabeth Hubert, May 16) and Wil (Willemina Jacob, March 16). Vincent is remembered by the family as a wayward, difficult and boring child with "strange manners", which was the reason for his frequent punishments. According to the governess, there was something strange about him that distinguished him from others: of all the children, Vincent was the least pleasant to her, and she did not believe that something worthwhile could come out of him. Outside the family, on the contrary, Vincent showed the opposite side of his character - he was quiet, serious and thoughtful. He hardly played with other children. In the eyes of his fellow villagers, he was a good-natured, friendly, helpful, compassionate, sweet and modest child. When he was 7 years old, he went to a village school, but a year later he was taken away from there, and together with his sister Anna, he studied at home, with a governess. On October 1, 1864, he leaves for a boarding school in Zevenbergen, 20 km from his home. Departure from home caused much suffering to Vincent, he could not forget this, even as an adult. On September 15, 1866, he begins his studies at another boarding school, Willem II College in Tilburg. Vincent is good at languages ​​- French, English, German. There he received drawing lessons. In March of the year, in the middle of the school year, Vincent suddenly drops out of school and returns to his father's house. This concludes his formal education. He recalls his childhood like this: “My childhood was gloomy, cold and empty ...”

Gallery

self-portraits

sunflowers

Landscape

Miscellaneous

Links

Literature

• Van Gogh. Letters. Per. with a goal - L.-M., 1966.
• Rewald J. Post-impressionism. Per. from English. T. 1. - L.-M, 1962.
• Perryusho A. Van Gogh's life. Per. from French - M., 1973.
• Murina E. Van Gogh. - M., 1978.
• Dmitrieva N. A. Vincent Van Gogh. Man and artist. - M., 1980.
• Stone I. Lust for Life (book). The Tale of W. Van Gogh. Per. from English. - M., 1992.
• Constantino Porcu Van Gogh. Zijn leven en de kunst. (from the Kunstklassiekers series) Netherlands, 2004.
• Wolf Stadler Vincent van Gogh. (from the De Grote Meesters series) Amsterdam Boek, 1974.
• Frank Kools Vincent van Gogh en zijn geboorteplaats: als een boer van Zundert. De Walburg Pers, 1990.

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

• Van Gogh, Vincent
• Van Dijk, T. A.

See what "Van Gogh" is in other dictionaries:

van Gogh- (van gogh) Vincent (1853, Grotto Zundert, Holland - 1890, Auvers sur Oise, near Paris), Dutch painter, representative of post-impressionism. Son of a Protestant priest. In 1869 76 served as a commission agent for an art trading company ... ... Art Encyclopedia

van Gogh- (van Gogh) Vincent (1853 1890) Dutch painter, whose main period of creativity took place in France and was about 5 years (the last years of his life), one of the largest representatives of post-impressionism. Comes from a family of a pastor, in ... ... Encyclopedia of cultural studies

van Gogh- Vincent (Van Gogh, Vincent) 1853, Grotto Zundert, North Brabant 1890, Auvers sur Oise, France. Dutch painter and draftsman. He did not receive a formal education. In his youth, he changed a number of professions. From 1869 he worked in the firm of Goupil and Co. for ... ... European Art: Painting. Sculpture. Graphics: Encyclopedia

van Gogh- (van Gogh) Vincent (Vincent Willem) (March 30, 1853, Grotto Zundert, Holland, July 29, 1890, Auvers sur Oise, France), Dutch painter. Pastor's son. In 1869, 76 served as a commission agent for an artistic trading company in The Hague, Brussels, London and ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

VAN GOGH- (var. to Van Gogh; Vincent Van Gogh (1853 1890) - Dutch artist) It used to be - / season, / our god - Van Gogh, / another season - / Cezanne. M925 (149) ... Proper name in Russian poetry of the XX century: a dictionary of personal names

Tumanova E.E.

Vincent Van Gogh

Self-portrait in front of the Easel 1888

Great Dutch artist

Vincent van Gogh, like Rembrandt, was a Dutchman. Here is the first external fact, the accidental biography, which, however, immediately acquires a non-random significance and gives us the key to the doors of his life. Even Hippolyte Taine, and after him other sociologists, pointed to the causal dependence of art on the surrounding material environment. But one amendment must be made to their somewhat mechanical explanation of art: the causal relationship between the human spirit and the external environment is not always direct - sometimes it is reverse. There are brilliant artists who embody the dictates of their time and their people - such were the masters of Greece and the Renaissance; but there are other geniuses who can only be understood as deniers of this milieu. Their life and work flow from this environment in the sense that they are a reaction against it. Such a protest against the common sense of his time was the appearance of Rembrandt, especially the second half of his work, starting with The Night Watch, when the gulf between him and his burgher customers grew. The same personified protest against the philistine spirit of Holland is the life and work of Van Gogh.

For the Impressionists, one of the main objects of display was a person. His image was interpreted in such a way that he asserted himself in the struggle with his environment and himself painfully, hard, straining his inner strength to the limit. This aspect of post-impressionist art is best seen in the work of Vincent van Gogh.

Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890) is considered a great Dutch painter who had a very strong influence on impressionism in art. His works, created in a ten-year period, amaze with their color, negligence and roughness of the brushstroke, images of a mentally ill man, exhausted by suffering, who committed suicide.

Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in Holland. He was named after his deceased brother, who was born a year before him on the same day. Therefore, it always seemed to him that he was replacing someone else. Shyness, shyness, too sensitive nature alienated him from his classmates, and his only friend was his older brother Theo, with whom they vowed not to part as a child. Vincent was 27 when he finally realized that he wanted to be an artist. "I can't express how happy I am that I started painting again. I often thought about it, but I thought that drawing was beyond my abilities." So Vincent wrote to his brother.

In practice, Van Gogh was self-taught, although he used the advice of A. Mauve. But to an even greater extent than the recommendations of a modern Dutch painter, acquaintance with the works and reproductions of Rembrandt, Delacour, Daumier and Millet played in the formation of Van Gogh. The painting itself, which he turned to after trying various professions (a salesman in a salon, a teacher, a preacher), he understood as something that no longer carries the word of a sermon to the people, but an artistic image.

One of Van Gogh's famous paintings is The Potato Eaters.

"Potato Eaters", 1885

In a dark, gloomy room, five people are sitting at a table: two men, two women, and a girl visible from the back. A kerosene lamp hanging from above illuminates thin, tired faces and large, overworked hands. A meager meal of the peasants - a plate of boiled potatoes and liquid coffee. The images of people combine monumental grandeur and compassion, which lives in wide-open eyes, tightly upturned triangles of eyebrows, wrinkles that are clearly readable even on young faces.

Life and work in France

In 1886, Vincent came to Paris and from now on he never returns to his homeland... Van Gogh, a Dutchman by nationality, came to France as an established artist who depicted the people and nature of his homeland.

Arriving in Paris makes significant adjustments to Van Gogh's work, without changing its main essence. The artist is still full of sympathy and love for the little man, but this man is already different - a resident of the French capital, the artist himself.

The change in Van Gogh's style was to a certain extent dictated by a change in his ideological position. In its most general form, his view of the world at that time can be considered more joyful, brighter than in Holland. This side of his work is especially well revealed in landscapes and still lifes. Having become a passionate supporter of the open air, he wanders around Paris, depicts the corners of Montmartre, the banks and bridges of the Seine, folk theaters and feels like a real Frenchman. “We are working, all together, on the French Renaissance - here I am, as it were, at home,” Van Gogh writes. Indeed, from now on his work belongs to France and mankind; he becomes an ally of the Impressionists, shares their hardships, contributes to their success...

But the fiery nature of Van Gogh was alien to the middle; in everything he undertook, he went to the end. The search for light and air, the passion for Seurat's technique (divisionism) could not but ignite in him the desire to leave gray Paris and go south. It became cramped for him in the capital, and the south is drawn to him as that promised land, where only it is possible “from now on to organize an atelier of the future”, where only the artist’s talent can unfold. And in 1888 he moved to Arles, a town in Provence.

A new period of creativity - the town of Provence.

Here begins a new period of Van Gogh's work. The first impression did not deceive him. Provence seemed to him “in its joyful measure of colors a country as beautiful as Japan”, and he only regrets that he did not get here in his youth ... “Joyful play of colors” - how unexpected these words are in the language of Van Gogh, a recent ascetic, - they poured out all his new attitude to the world, the attitude of the painter. New and at the same time old, because he loved nature since childhood. But in Holland he loved only her quiet sadness, but here, among the southern splendor, he first admired the brightness of colors, the brilliance of the sun. Here for the first time he felt that there could not be a difference between him and his great teacher, Rembrandt. “Rembrandt painted with chiaroscuro, we paint with colors,” he says in one letter, formulating this revolution that happened to him in the south. Rembrandt saw in the world, first of all, the contrast of light and shadow, for Van Gogh the world is first of all a celebration of color, a play of colors.

The technique of painting in general plays a much greater role in our era than before. When we look at a painting by an old master, we, in essence, forget about the technique, about the manner of the stroke - form and content, feeling and intellect, objective and subjective are balanced in it to such an extent. But - alas! - modern man is far from this classical balance of spirit, and that is why in a modern picture we, first of all, notice the subjective approach of the artist to this or that object. And technique, as Puvis de Chavannes rightly remarks, is nothing but the artist's temperament, the degree of intensity of his worldview. There are realist artists who perceive the world with such submissive passivity that we forget about their human personality and only say: “How vividly this samovar or red chest of drawers is written - it is just like a real one.” But there are other artists, with an irrepressible and rebellious soul, who cannot hide behind the matter of the depicted object the very pace of their experience. Looking at their picture, we see, first of all, not what is depicted, but how it is depicted, we, as it were, participate in the very process of their creation, we are excited and in a hurry with them. For such individualist artists, technique occupies an enormous place, but at the same time it ceases to be technique in the usual sense of the word, that is, something external and handicraft.

That's what Van Gogh is. "Ordered stroke" seems to him "as impossible as fencing during an assault." He is truly an impressionist, in the deepest sense of the word, an impressionist more than all the others whom we are accustomed to call that, for he changes his technique several times even within the same picture, according to each given impression. Each object impresses him differently, and each time the strings of his soul vibrate differently, and the hand hurries to record these inner notes. He works now with a brush, then with a knife, liquidly prescribing that, thickly sculpting with paints, throwing strokes now along and across. He always works at once, at first impression, in some kind of instant ecstasy, and it seems that the picture breaks out from under his brush, like a cry of admiration for nature or pity for man. In the very pace of his strokes, you always feel the rhythmic rise or fall of this cry, you feel the burning of his soul.

Himself eternally ebullient, indefatigable, he sees in the world, first of all, an eternally active principle. His world is in a relentless cycle, growth, formation. He perceives objects not as bodies, but as phenomena. This does not mean that he depicts any one moment of nature caught on the fly, like Claude Monet. No, he depicts not one moment, but the continuity of moments, the leitmotif of each object is its dynamic being. That is why each of his studies from nature surpasses casual observation, rising to the contemplation of the abstract, to the cosmic spectacle. He is an artist of world rhythms. He paints not this effect of the setting sun, but how the sun sets in general, sending arrows of rays that scatter around the canvas, or how it arises from a golden fog thickening in concentric circles.

He depicted not the effect of a tree accidentally bent by the wind, but the very growth of a tree from the ground, the growth of branches from a tree. Its cypress trees seem like gothic temples, lancet visions rushing to the sky. Crouched from the southern heat, they ascend, writhing like huge swirling tongues of green flame themselves, and if they are bushes, they burn on the ground like bonfires. Its mountain ranges really bend, as if forming before our eyes from the initial geological chaos... Its roads, beds and furrows of fields really run away into the distance, and its strokes really spread like a carpet of grass, or go up the hills. All this, sounding only a verbal turnover with you and me, lives, and moves, and leaves with Van Gogh. And his cosmos, his landscapes are engulfed in eternal fire, like himself, and clouds swirl in them like smoke.

Van Gogh is a portrait painter.

Van Gogh's dynamic manner is revealed even more clearly in his marvelous drawings made with a reed pen, which he sketched with Japanese virtuosity and generously scattered in his letters, illustrating thoughts. He wanted to draw as quickly as he wrote, and indeed, these strokes and dots are the signature of his genius. I don't know of any contemporary graphic artist who possesses such confidence in line, such power of suggestion, such laconicism in drawing. His sketches with a pen are some kind of pulsograms of the world, graphic symbols of world life. Here is a tree running up in curls of lines, notes of haystacks formed from spirals, and grass growing vertically, and roofs going up with tiles, or tattered branches growing here and there ...

Here is a portrait of a postman from Arles. How complacently his sideburns are combed with strokes, how happily the wallpaper flowers glow against the background!

"Portrait of a postman from Arly", 1889

In one of his letters, Van Gogh writes about him that this gentleman is very pleased and proud, since he has just become a happy father.

Here is "Berceuse" - a fishing nanny, whom, according to fishing beliefs, you often see in the night in front of the boat, at the hour of bad weather - then she amuses with fairy tales.

"The Fisherman's Nanny", 1888

And indeed, how many strong fairy tales, rough and bright, this woman must know of fairy tales, similar to these blooming popular prints in the background! Van Gogh was going to give this picture to Saint-Marie - a shelter for sailors ...

And here again is something opposite: a self-portrait of Van Gogh himself, strokes of which are like exposed nerves. There is no longer an external resemblance, not a mask of a face, but the very tense and revealed soul ...

"Self-portrait", September 1889

But an even greater fact of Van Gogh's expressiveness than his technique is color. He reveals the characteristic in a person not only by exaggerating the drawing, but also by the symbolism of colors. “I want to make a portrait of my friend, an artist who has wonderful dreams,” he writes in a letter to his brother. “I would like to put all my love for him into this portrait and I choose colors completely arbitrarily. I exaggerate the light tone of his hair to the extent of orange. Then, as a background, instead of depicting a banal wall of a squalid apartment, I will paint infinity, the most intense blue tone that is on my palette. With this combination, a golden head against a blue background will appear as a star in the deep blue of the sky.

I do exactly the same in the portrait of a peasant, imagining this man in the midday sun, in the midst of the harvest. Hence these orange reflections, sparkling like red-hot iron; hence this tone of old gold, burning in the dark... Ah, my dear, many will see in this exaggeration a caricature, but what do I care! ”

Thus, in contrast to most portrait painters, who think that the likeness is limited to the face, the colors of the background were for Van Gogh not an accidental decoration, but the same expressive factor as the drawing. His "Fisherman's Nanny" is all written in sonorous popular-flowery colors. One of his Arlesian women, probably a malicious provincial gossip, is dressed in black and blue, like a crow's wing, and therefore even more like a cawing bird. So each color had its own definite laconic meaning in Van Gogh's eyes, was for him a symbol of spiritual experience, evoked analogies in him. He not only loved the colorfulness of the world, but also read in it the words of a whole secret language.

But of all the color-words, he was most fascinated by two: yellow and blue. The yellow major scale, from pale lemon to resounding orange, was for him a symbol of the sun, a rye ear, the good news of Christian love. He loved her.

The human soul...not cathedrals.

Let's turn to Van Gogh: "I prefer to paint people's eyes, not cathedrals ... the human soul, even the soul of an unfortunate beggar or a street girl, in my opinion, is much more interesting." “Those who write peasant life will stand the test of time better than the makers of cardinal devices and harems written in Paris.” “I will remain myself, and even in raw works I will say strict, rude, but truthful things.” “The worker against the bourgeois is not as well founded as the third estate against the other two a hundred years ago.”

Could a person who in these and a thousand similar statements so explained the meaning of life and art count on success with “the powers that be? ". The bourgeois environment uprooted Van Gogh. Against rejection, Van Gogh had the only weapon - confidence in the correctness of the chosen path and work. “Art is a struggle… it is better to do nothing than to express yourself weakly.” "You have to work like a few blacks." Even a half-starved existence is turned into a stimulus for creativity: “In the severe trials of poverty, you learn to look at things with completely different eyes.”

The bourgeois public does not forgive innovation, and Van Gogh was an innovator in the most direct and true sense of the word. His reading of the sublime and beautiful went through an understanding of the inner essence of objects and phenomena: from as insignificant as torn shoes to crushing cosmic hurricanes. The ability to present these seemingly disparate values ​​on an equally huge artistic scale put Van Gogh not only outside the official aesthetic concept of academic artists, but also forced him to go beyond the scope of impressionistic painting.

Van Gogh is a post-impressionist.

At the beginning of the 20th century too straightforward opposition of Van Gogh's art (exactly like Cezanne, Gauguin and Toulus - Lottrek) to impressionistic practice led to the creation of a new term - "post-impressionism". Its premise is obvious. The relationship between the two generations of artists was much more complex and broader than the usual polemics of successive trends. For all the seeming incomparability of works created from the Renaissance to Impressionism inclusive, European painting was based on a system based on the principle of “see-depict”.

In Impressionism, he reached a particularly complete development, expressed in the amazing naturalness and variety of significant impressions recorded by the artist. In the endless change of light and air outfits of nature, the Impressionists saw the beautiful face of its eternal renewal.

But the cult of direct impression also contained something that made the system of visual perception rigid and limited. In the unrestrained pursuit of an elusive and disobedient moment, the object of observation imperceptibly moved into the background, as a result of which the artistic image as a whole turned out to be irreparably impoverished.

The post-impressionists and Van Gogh, in particular, proposed a fundamentally different method, a method of synthesizing observations and knowledge, an analysis of the internal structure of things and phenomena, which opened the way to enlarge the scale of images and expanded the cognitive possibilities of art. “I see in all nature, for example in trees, an expression and, so to speak, a soul.” These words are the key to reading Vangogh's interpretation of the artistic image. It is based on the fusion of two principles: the first of which refers to everything related to work on nature, and the second is determined by the creative impulse of the artist himself, which allows him to see reality in a brighter and more transformed form.

Van Gogh once compared academic painting with a ruinous mistress who “... freezes you, sucks your blood, turns you into stone... Fuck this mistress to hell,” he says, “and fall in love with your true lover without memory - Lady Nature or Reality. He touchingly loved this “Lady” all his life, brushing aside any encroachment on his feelings. Gauguin, who called him to work on the imagination, endured time in vain. No force could force Van Gogh to tear art away from life. But the love for the "Lady of Reality" was not at all someone else's, blind. Naturalists were despised by Van Gogh, even more “dreamers”. In Van Gogh's eyes, work from nature is "the taming of the shrew." Once people believed in the earth's firmament, and later it turned out that the earth was round ... Perhaps, however, life is also round and many times exceeds in its length and properties the curve that we now know. In order to know this extent, Van Gogh tore off the tinsel of banal everyday life from it and revealed the truth in all its nakedness. But extracting the truth is not conceivable without the transforming creative impulse of the artist himself, concentrating all his mind and feeling in it. Without this, it is impossible to turn “potato eaters” into witnesses for all “humiliated and insulted”, to make worn, torn shoes scream about the martyrs of poverty. The organic fusion of the “visible world” and the “essential world” is “... something new, ... the highest in art, where art often stands above nature.” Higher in the sense in which Van Gogh's paintings are higher and truer than visible truth.

The most important link in the figurative system of Vangogh art is animation and humanization. Any element of the universe in his eyes is significant and beautiful only when it acquires the ability to feel: in Van Gogh even stones suffer. Human perception is a prism that refracts everything that exists. "I would like to do everything the way ... a railway watchman sees and feels it all." In the mutilated old willows by the road, Van Gogh sees something in common with the procession of old people from the almshouse, and an open book, a burning candle and a shabby chair are transformed into a “portrait” of their owner who left them. (“Armchair of Gauguin”).

Van Gogh forces any component of nature to be a tuning fork of his emotions of intellect. Nature gives him not only motives, but also becomes for him a moral support, a source of moral strength. Even Millet said: "Patience can be learned from a germinating seed." Van Gogh understands this in his own way: “In every healthy and normal person lives the same desire to ripen as in the grain, therefore, life is a process of ripening. What the desire to ripen is for grain, love is for us.” This is the main nerve of Vangogh's understanding of the world and aesthetics: to be in love with humanity! In Van Gogh, this is above family feelings and social prejudices. Without hesitation, he tears his last shirt to lint, because it is necessary to bandage the wounds of the injured miner, shares shelter and bread with the children of a prostitute, from dawn to dawn, in the sun and rain, bends his back over the paper, like a plowman over a plow, drop by drop giving blood his paintings and drawings, never demanding anything for himself.

How tragically his idea of ​​beauty did not converge with the concept of a prosperous tradesman! “There is nothing more artistic than loving children!” This is the slogan of Van Gogh, which has been suffered by the layman of all times, “in the severe trials of poverty”, is able to squeeze out only a wry smile. Aesthetics Van Gogh - the brainchild of another world. His “beautiful” smells of earth, ripe bread, then a peasant, the wind from the fields stretched under the sky “immense like the sea”, it revolves with human warmth and kindness in the most rude and ugly faces.

The aesthetic idea of ​​Van Gogh does not tolerate abstraction. Beauty is seen by him as a woman: "what are her aspirations." “Love and be loved, live and give life, renew it, nurture it, support it, work, responding with ardor to ardor, and, most importantly, be kind, useful, fit for something, at least, for example, to kindle a fire in the hearth, give a piece of bread to a child and a glass of water to a sick person. But all this is also very beautiful and sublime! Yes, but she doesn't know those words. Her reasoning ... is not too brilliant, not too refined, but the feelings are always genuine. The embodiment of this "authenticity" urgently demanded adequate strength and expressiveness of the pictorial system. For anyone who has something to say, finding the means to do it is a matter of life. The problem of the plein air would never have been solved if the Impressionists had not moved their studio directly to the street, into a field, into a forest or a boat, if they had not thrown out gray, brown and black colors from their painting, if they had not streaked the surface of their canvases with a vibrating grid small colorful strokes, that is, if they had not created a fundamentally new system of visual means. Van Gogh was different: “I want beauty to come not from the material, but from myself.” Any of the Impressionists is, first of all, an observer, sharp-sighted, subtle, sensitive, but always perceiving the object as if from the outside. For Van Gogh, “the struggle of breast against breast, the struggle with things in nature” is an urgent need. Hence the peculiar originality of his vision and manner.

Bright colors of Van Gogh.

Dreaming of a brotherhood of artists and collective creativity, he completely forgot that he himself was an incorrigible individualist, irreconcilable to the point of restraint in matters of life and art. But therein lay his strength. You need to have a sufficiently trained eye to distinguish Monet's paintings from those of Sisley, for example. But only once having seen the “Red Vineyards”, you will never confuse the works of Van Gogh with anyone else. Each line and stroke is the expression of his personality.

"Red Vineyards", 1888

The dominant impressionist system is color. In the pictorial system, Van Gogh's manner, everything is equal and crumpled into one inimitable bright ensemble: rhythm, color, texture, line, form.

At first glance, this is somewhat of a stretch. Do the “red vineyards” push around with the unheard-of intensity color, is not the ringing chord of blue cobalt in the “Sea in Saint-Marie” active, is it not the dazzlingly pure and sonorous colors of the “Landscape in Auvers after the rain”, next to which, any impressionistic picture looks hopelessly faded?

Exaggeratedly bright, these colors have the ability to sound in any intonation throughout the entire emotional range - from burning pain to the most delicate shades of joy. The sounding colors either intertwine into a softly and subtly harmonized melody, or rear up in an ear-piercing dissonance. Just as in music there is a minor and major system, so the colors of the Vangogh palette are divided in two. For Van Gogh, cold and warm are like life and death. At the head of the opposing camps are yellow and blue, both colors are deeply symbolic. However, this "symbolism" has the same living flesh as Vangogh's ideal of beauty.

Van Gogh saw a certain bright beginning in the yellow paint, from soft lemon to intense orange. The color of the sun and ripened bread in his understanding was the color of joy, solar warmth, human kindness, benevolence, love and happiness - all that in his mind was included in the concept of "life". Opposite in meaning, blue, from blue to almost black-lead, is the color of sadness, infinity, longing, despair, mental anguish, fatal inevitability and, ultimately, death. Van Gogh's late paintings are the arena of the clash of these two colors. They are like a struggle between good and evil, daylight and night twilight, hope and despair. The emotional and psychological possibilities of color are the subject of Van Gogh's constant reflections: “I hope to make a discovery in this area, for example, to express the feelings of two lovers by combining two complementary colors, mixing and contrasting them, by the mysterious vibration of related tones. Or to express the idea that has arisen in the brain with the radiance of a light tone against a dark background…”.

Speaking about Van Gogh, Tugendhold remarked: "... the notes of his experiences are the graphic rhythms of things and the reciprocal heartbeats." The concept of rest is unknown to Vangogh art. His element is movement.

In the eyes of Van Gogh, it is the same life, which means the ability to think, feel, empathize. Take a look at the painting of the "red vineyards". The strokes, thrown onto the canvas by a swift hand, run, rush, collide, scatter again. Similar to dashes, dots, blots, commas, they are a transcript of Vangogh's vision. From their cascades and whirlpools, simplified and expressive forms are born. They are a line that forms into a drawing. Their relief, sometimes barely outlined, sometimes piled up in massive clumps, like plowed earth, forms a delightful, picturesque texture. And out of all this, a huge image arises: in the hot heat of the sun, like sinners on fire, vines wriggle, trying to break away from the fat purple earth, to escape from the hands of the winegrowers, and now the peaceful bustle of harvesting looks like a fight between man and nature.

So, it means that color still dominates? But aren't these colors at the same time rhythm, line, form, and texture? This is the most important feature of the pictorial language of Van Gogh, in which he speaks to us through his paintings.

It is often believed that Vangogh painting is a kind of uncontrollable emotional element, spurred on by unbridled insight. This delusion is “helped” by the originality of Van Gogh’s artistic manner, which really seems to be spontaneous, but in fact it is subtly calculated, thought out: “Work and sober calculation, the mind is extremely tense, like an actor’s when playing a difficult role, when you have to think about a thousand things within one half hour….”

Life for work.

Van Gogh was extremely rich creatively: his "extravagance" broke his personal life, maimed him physically, but not spiritually. He died at thirty-seven, not because he no longer had anything to talk about, but because he did not want to give up his art of illness. "I paid with my life for my work, and it cost me half my sanity."

His latest work is sometimes shaken by despair, sometimes cold and chilling, but more often poured out by a thirst for being, piercing to the point of pain. “Landscape at Auvers after the rain” is outwardly peaceful and blissful, dictated precisely by this state of the artist. Rain-washed greens sparkle brightly. A horse harnessed to a cart rushes along the wet road. A train running along the rails smokes merrily. Among the beds, a peasant works, bending his back. Everything would be almost idyllic if it were not for the frantic rhythm of long and writhing strokes, forcing the rectangles of the vegetable gardens to collide in such a way that the space of the picture becomes, as it were, heaving and tense. Another second, and this whole bright, shining world will be blown up from the inside by a terrible destructive force bubbling somewhere in its depths.

“In a thousand torments - I am, I wander in torture - but there is! ... I see the sun, but I don’t see the sun, then I know that it is. And to know that there is a sun is already the whole life.” These lines of Dostoevsky could have been written by Van Gogh.

Literature:

Perryusho A. "Van Gogh's Life" 1997

Dmitrieva N. A. "Vincent van Gogh: essay on life and work"

Robert Wallace "Van Gogh's World" 1998

Photos taken from the "Internet" http://www.vangoghgallery.com/index.html

Vincent Van Gogh. This name is familiar to every student. Even in childhood, we joked among ourselves “you draw like Van Gogh”! or “well, you are Picasso!”… After all, only the one whose name will forever remain in the history of not only painting and world art, but also humanity is immortal.

Against the backdrop of the fate of European artists, the life path of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is distinguished by the fact that he discovered his craving for art rather late. Until the age of 30, Vincent did not suspect that painting would become the ultimate meaning of his life. The vocation ripens in him slowly, in order to break out like an explosion. At the cost of labor almost on the verge of human capabilities, which will become the lot of his entire remaining life, during the years 1885-1887, Vincent will be able to develop his own individual and unique style, which in the future will be called "impasto". His artistic style will contribute to the rooting in European art of one of the most sincere, sensitive, humane and emotional trends - expressionism. But, most importantly, it will become the source of his work, his paintings and graphics.

Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in the family of a Protestant pastor, in the Dutch province of North Brabant, in the village of Grotto Zundert, where his father was in the service. The family environment determined a lot in the fate of Vincent. The Van Gogh family was ancient, known since the 17th century. In the era of Vincent van Gogh, there were two traditional family activities: one of the representatives of this family was necessarily engaged in church activities, and someone in the art trade. Vincent was the eldest, but not the first child in the family. A year earlier, he was born, but his brother died soon after. The second son was named in memory of the deceased by Vincent Willem. After him, five more children appeared, but only with one of them would the future artist be connected by close fraternal ties until the last day of his life. It would not be an exaggeration to say that without the support of his younger brother Theo, Vincent van Gogh as an artist would hardly have taken place.

In 1869, Van Gogh moved to The Hague and began to trade paintings in the Goupil firm and reproductions of works of art. Vincent works actively and conscientiously, in his free time he reads a lot and visits museums, and draws a little. In 1873, Vincent begins a correspondence with his brother Theo, which will last until his death. In our time, the letters of the brothers are published in a book called “Van Gogh. Letters to Brother Theo” and you can buy it in almost any good bookstore. These letters are moving evidence of Vincent's inner spiritual life, his searches and mistakes, joys and disappointments, despair and hopes.

In 1875, Vincent was assigned to Paris. He regularly visits the Louvre and the Luxembourg Museum, exhibitions of contemporary artists. By this time, he is already drawing himself, but nothing foreshadows that art will soon become an all-consuming passion. In Paris, there is a turning point in his spiritual development: Van Gogh is very fond of religion. Many researchers attribute this condition to the unhappy and one-sided love that Vincent experienced in London. Much later, in one of his letters to Theo, the artist, analyzing his illness, notes that mental illness is their family trait.

From January 1879, Vincent received a position as a preacher in Vama, a village located in the Borinage, an area in southern Belgium, the center of the coal industry. He is deeply struck by the extreme poverty in which the miners and their families live. A deep conflict begins, which opens Van Gogh's eyes to one truth - the ministers of the official church are not at all interested in truly alleviating the plight of people who find themselves in inhuman conditions.

Having fully understood this sanctimonious position, Van Gogh experiences another deep disappointment, breaks with the church and makes his final life choice - to serve people with his art.

Van Gogh and Paris

Van Gogh's last visits to Paris were related to his work at Goupil. However, never before had the artistic life of Paris had a noticeable influence on his work. This time Van Gogh's stay in Paris lasts from March 1886 to February 1888. These are two extremely eventful years in the artist's life. During this short period, he masters the impressionistic and neo-impressionistic techniques, which contributes to the lightening of his own color palette. The artist, who arrived from Holland, turns into one of the most original representatives of the Parisian avant-garde, whose innovation breaks from within all the conventions that fetter the enormous expressive possibilities of color as such.

In Paris, Van Gogh communicates with Camille Pissarro, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, Emile Bernard and Georges Seurat and other young painters, as well as with the paint dealer and collector dad Tanguy.

last years of life

By the end of 1889, at this difficult time for himself, aggravated by fits of insanity, mental disorders and a craving for suicide, Van Gogh received an invitation to take part in the exhibition of the Salon des Indépendants, organized in Brussels. At the end of November, Vincent sends 6 paintings there. On May 17, 1890, Theo has a plan to settle Vincent in the town of Auvers-sur-Oise under the supervision of Dr. Gachet, who was fond of painting and was a friend of the Impressionists. Van Gogh's condition is improving, he works hard, paints portraits of his new acquaintances, landscapes.

July 6, 1890 Van Gogh arrives in Paris to Theo. Albert Aurier and Toulouse-Lautrec visit Theo's house to meet him.

From the last letter to Theo, Van Gogh says: “... Through me, you took part in the creation of some canvases that even in a storm keep my peace. Well, I paid with my life for my work, and it cost me half my sanity, that's right… But I'm not sorry.”

Thus ended the life of one of the greatest artists not only of the 19th century, but of the entire history of art as a whole.

Vincent van Gogh is a Dutch artist who has been searching for peace of mind all his life. Created more than 2100 paintings: landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits. He was strongly attached to his family and committed suicide. Read the biography of the artist, whose talent was appreciated only after his death.

Vincent van Gogh: a short biography

Posthumously famous artist Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in the province of Brabant, in the village of Grot-Zundert, Holland in the family of a pastor. The family, according to the memoirs of Van Gogh himself in notes to his brother Theo, was friendly. Vincent was mentally chained to his mother for the rest of his life. At a young age, this even caused the artist to quit his studies and return to his home.

He received his first general education together with his brother and sisters in his father's house.. The governess did not speak favorably of the future artist. In her opinion, something gloomy, abnormal and detached was read in Vincent. After entering a school in another city, he quickly leaves the educational institution and returns home. Vincent van Gogh did not have a general education . In 1869 he went to work in a company selling paintings. Presumably, during this period, Van Gogh showed a craving for painting. In 1873 moves to London due to promotion. The capital with its temptations, internal laws and innovations for a village boy radically changed the life of a young man. The future master did not move up the career ladder, and love is to blame. Having fallen in love with the daughter of the landlady, he quickly forgets about everything. The young lady was betrothed to another and this was the first blow in the life of Vincent van Gogh. In the future, the theme of love flashes more than once on the map of the artist's life, but, looking ahead, he sought solace already on the breasts of prostitutes.

In 1875 he went to Paris, a dirty and depraved city at that time, which absorbed the soul of the artist. A period of desperate search for oneself begins. The creative side of Paris brought Van Gogh to a circle of eminent artists. He develops a close friendship with Gauguin. It is with this man that the episode with the cut off ear in the life of Van Gogh is connected. In 1877 he returned to his native Netherlands., tries to find solace in religion, starting training as a priest, but soon parted with this idea - the theological situation at the faculty in Amsterdam, where Van Gogh entered, did not suit the rebellious spirit of the creator at all.

In 1886 he returned to Paris again, settling with his brother Theo, who by that time was already married. Birth of a nephew, also named Vincent, and then his sudden death, became another trigger that awakened the mental illness of the author of the famous "Sunflowers". Despite the fact that Van Gogh's paintings are oversaturated with bright colors, life was dirty, vicious and gloomy: he repeatedly had sex with prostitutes, was rejected by women with whom he was madly in love (cousin Kay Vos), ignoring brushes among famous masters and constant disagreements with Gauguin.

Settles in Arles in 1888. Residents reacted with tension to the move of the crazy artist, continuing the chain of social conflicts of Van Gogh. After Van Gogh in an attack cut off a part of the left care and, according to the stories, gave it to Gauguin's favorite prostitute, with whom he also shared a bed, spent several weeks in a psychiatric hospital. I got back to the department a year later, when hallucinations appeared. In 1890 he went to Paris, feeling healthy, but the disease returned again. On July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a pistol. dying in the arms of his brother. Buried in the Cemetery of Auvers.

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Van Gogh Vincent (Vincent Willem) (1853-1890), Dutch painter.

In 1869-1876. served as a commissioner for art and trading firms in The Hague, Brussels, London and Paris; in 1876 he worked as a teacher in England.

In 1878-1879. was a preacher in the Borinage (Belgium), where he learned the hard life of miners; protecting their interests brought Van Gogh into conflict with church authorities.

In the 80s. 19th century he turns to art, attends the art academy in Brussels (1880-1881) and Antwerp (1885-1886). Van Gogh enthusiastically draws destitute working people - miners of the Borinage, later - peasants, artisans, fishermen, whose life he observed in Holland in 1881-1885.

Already at the age of thirty, Van Gogh decided to devote himself to painting. He created a series of paintings depicting ordinary people and made in dark, gloomy colors ("Peasant Woman", "Potato Eaters", both 1885). In the initial period of creativity, the artist also made a lot of drawings, in which human figures appear, and landscapes (swamps, ponds, trees, winter roads, etc.). They are influenced by the French painter and graphic artist J. F. Millet.

Since 1886, Van Gogh has been living in Paris, where he joins the searches of A. de Toulouse-Lautrec, P. Gauguin, C. Pizarro. Thanks to these first contacts, light colors appear in his palette, light and color begin to play a more important role in the paintings.

Under the influence of painting by J. Seurat, the artist paints for some time with separate strokes of additional colors, but soon moves on to a simple and vivid expression of color. In this, Van Gogh follows the example of E. Bernard and L. Anquetin, who draw inspiration from stained-glass windows, where clear color planes are delimited by lead partitions, as well as from the “surprising clarity” and “confident drawing” of Japanese prints (“Bridge over the Seine”, “Portrait papa Tanga", both 1887).

In February 1888, Van Gogh left for the south of France, for Arles. Here he creates landscapes shining with the joyful, sunny colors of the south (“Harvest”, “Valley of La Crot”, “Fishing Boats in Sainte-Marie”, “Red Vineyards in Arles”, all. 1888, etc.), spiritualizes ordinary objects with his temperament (“Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles”, 1888), sometimes succumbing to bouts of loneliness and melancholy (“Night Cafe in Arles”, 1888).

In October, Gauguin comes to the artist. Under his short-lived influence, Van Gogh wrote "Dance Hall". The two artists often and violently argue; one such scene ends with Van Gogh mutilating himself in madness by cutting off his ear. Friends disperse.

The color in the works of Van Gogh becomes even brighter, the impressionistic flickering gives way to almost monochrome paintings, in which either endless beaches or wide furrows of fields appear - both color and object form. Van Gogh refers to light that cannot be called simply daylight - it has an undoubted shade of the supernatural, the artist is looking for an ever more truthful expression of the mystery of the human being and stands out from the general flow of impressionism with a painful thirst for spirituality.

The strain of forces and long studies under the sizzling Arlesian sun led to the fact that the last years of Van Gogh's life were complicated by bouts of mental illness. 1889-1890 he spends in a hospital in Arles, then in Saint-Remy and Auvers-sur-Oise, where on July 29, 1890, he commits suicide.

The works of the last two years breathe a dark, heavy mood ("At the gates of eternity", "Road with cypresses and stars", "Landscape at Auvers after the rain", all 1890).

The creative life of the artist did not last long - about ten years, but during this time about 2200 works were created.