a short biography of vincent van gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was one of the world’s greatest artists, with paintings such as ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Sunflowers,’ though he was unknown until after his death.

(1853-1890)

Who Was Vincent van Gogh?

Vincent van Gogh was a post-Impressionist painter whose work — notable for its beauty, emotion and color — highly influenced 20th-century art. He struggled with mental illness and remained poor and virtually unknown throughout his life.

Early Life and Family

Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. Van Gogh’s father, Theodorus van Gogh, was an austere country minister, and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus, was a moody artist whose love of nature, drawing and watercolors was transferred to her son.

Van Gogh was born exactly one year after his parents' first son, also named Vincent, was stillborn. At a young age — with his name and birthdate already etched on his dead brother's headstone — van Gogh was melancholy.

Theo van Gogh

The eldest of six living children, van Gogh had two younger brothers (Theo, who worked as an art dealer and supported his older brother’s art, and Cor) and three younger sisters (Anna, Elizabeth and Willemien).

Theo van Gogh would later play an important role in his older brother's life as a confidant, supporter and art dealer.

Early Life and Education

At age 15, van Gogh's family was struggling financially, and he was forced to leave school and go to work. He got a job at his Uncle Cornelis' art dealership, Goupil & Cie., a firm of art dealers in The Hague. By this time, van Gogh was fluent in French, German and English, as well as his native Dutch.

In June of 1873, van Gogh was transferred to the Groupil Gallery in London. There, he fell in love with English culture. He visited art galleries in his spare time, and also became a fan of the writings of Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

He also fell in love with his landlady's daughter, Eugenie Loyer. When she rejected his marriage proposal, van Gogh suffered a breakdown. He threw away all his books except for the Bible, and devoted his life to God. He became angry with people at work, telling customers not to buy the "worthless art," and was eventually fired.

Life as a Preacher

Van Gogh then taught in a Methodist boys' school, and also preached to the congregation. Although raised in a religious family, it wasn't until this time that he seriously began to consider devoting his life to the church

Hoping to become a minister, he prepared to take the entrance exam to the School of Theology in Amsterdam. After a year of studying diligently, he refused to take the Latin exams, calling Latin a "dead language" of poor people, and was subsequently denied entrance.

The same thing happened at the Church of Belgium: In the winter of 1878, van Gogh volunteered to move to an impoverished coal mine in the south of Belgium, a place where preachers were usually sent as punishment. He preached and ministered to the sick, and also drew pictures of the miners and their families, who called him "Christ of the Coal Mines."

The evangelical committees were not as pleased. They disagreed with van Gogh's lifestyle, which had begun to take on a tone of martyrdom. They refused to renew van Gogh's contract, and he was forced to find another occupation.

Finding Solace in Art

In the fall of 1880, van Gogh decided to move to Brussels and become an artist. Though he had no formal art training, his brother Theo offered to support van Gogh financially.

He began taking lessons on his own, studying books like Travaux des champs by Jean-François Millet and Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue.

Van Gogh's art helped him stay emotionally balanced. In 1885, he began work on what is considered to be his first masterpiece, "Potato Eaters." Theo, who by this time living in Paris, believed the painting would not be well-received in the French capital, where Impressionism had become the trend.

Nevertheless, van Gogh decided to move to Paris, and showed up at Theo's house uninvited. In March 1886, Theo welcomed his brother into his small apartment.

In Paris, van Gogh first saw Impressionist art, and he was inspired by the color and light. He began studying with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Camille Pissarro and others.

To save money, he and his friends posed for each other instead of hiring models. Van Gogh was passionate, and he argued with other painters about their works, alienating those who became tired of his bickering.

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Van Gogh's love life was nothing short of disastrous: He was attracted to women in trouble, thinking he could help them. When he fell in love with his recently widowed cousin, Kate, she was repulsed and fled to her home in Amsterdam.

Van Gogh then moved to The Hague and fell in love with Clasina Maria Hoornik, an alcoholic prostitute. She became his companion, mistress and model.

When Hoornik went back to prostitution, van Gogh became utterly depressed. In 1882, his family threatened to cut off his money unless he left Hoornik and The Hague.

Van Gogh left in mid-September of that year to travel to Drenthe, a somewhat desolate district in the Netherlands. For the next six weeks, he lived a nomadic life, moving throughout the region while drawing and painting the landscape and its people.

Van Gogh became influenced by Japanese art and began studying Eastern philosophy to enhance his art and life. He dreamed of traveling there, but was told by Toulouse-Lautrec that the light in the village of Arles was just like the light in Japan.

In February 1888, van Gogh boarded a train to the south of France. He moved into a now-famous "yellow house" and spent his money on paint rather than food.

Vincent van Gogh completed more than 2,100 works, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings and sketches.

Several of his paintings now rank among the most expensive in the world; "Irises" sold for a record $53.9 million, and his "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" sold for $82.5 million. A few of van Gogh’s most well-known artworks include:

'Starry Night'

Van Gogh painted "The Starry Night" in the asylum where he was staying in Saint-Rémy, France, in 1889, the year before his death. “This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,” he wrote to his brother Theo.

A combination of imagination, memory, emotion and observation, the oil painting on canvas depicts an expressive swirling night sky and a sleeping village, with a large flame-like cypress, thought to represent the bridge between life and death, looming in the foreground. The painting is currently housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY.

'Sunflowers'

Van Gogh painted two series of sunflowers in Arles, France: four between August and September 1888 and one in January 1889; the versions and replicas are debated among art historians.

The oil paintings on canvas, which depict wilting yellow sunflowers in a vase, are now displayed at museums in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Munich and Philadelphia.

In 1889, after entering an asylum in Saint-Rémy, France, van Gogh began painting Irises, working from the plants and flowers he found in the asylum's garden. Critics believe the painting was influenced by Japanese woodblock prints.

French critic Octave Mirbeau, the painting's first owner and an early supporter of Van Gogh, remarked, "How well he has understood the exquisite nature of flowers!"

'Self-Portrait'

Over the course of 10 years, van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits as both paintings and drawings. "I am looking for a deeper likeness than that obtained by a photographer," he wrote to his sister.

"People say, and I am willing to believe it, that it is hard to know yourself. But it is not easy to paint yourself, either. The portraits painted by Rembrandt are more than a view of nature, they are more like a revelation,” he later wrote to his brother.

Van Gogh's self-portraits are now displayed in museums around the world, including in Washington, D.C., Paris, New York and Amsterdam.

Van Gogh's Ear

In December 1888, van Gogh was living on coffee, bread and absinthe in Arles, France, and he found himself feeling sick and strange.

Before long, it became apparent that in addition to suffering from physical illness, his psychological health was declining. Around this time, he is known to have sipped on turpentine and eaten paint.

His brother Theo was worried, and he offered Paul Gauguin money to go watch over Vincent in Arles. Within a month, van Gogh and Gauguin were arguing constantly, and one night, Gauguin walked out. Van Gogh followed him, and when Gauguin turned around, he saw van Gogh holding a razor in his hand.

Hours later, van Gogh went to the local brothel and paid for a prostitute named Rachel. With blood pouring from his hand, he offered her his ear, asking her to "keep this object carefully."

The police found van Gogh in his room the next morning, and admitted him to the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. Theo arrived on Christmas Day to see van Gogh, who was weak from blood loss and having violent seizures.

The doctors assured Theo that his brother would live and would be taken good care of, and on January 7, 1889, van Gogh was released from the hospital.

He remained, however, alone and depressed. For hope, he turned to painting and nature, but could not find peace and was hospitalized again. He would paint at the yellow house during the day and return to the hospital at night.

Van Gogh decided to move to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence after the people of Arles signed a petition saying that he was dangerous.

On May 8, 1889, he began painting in the hospital gardens. In November 1889, he was invited to exhibit his paintings in Brussels. He sent six paintings, including "Irises" and "Starry Night."

On January 31, 1890, Theo and his wife, Johanna, gave birth to a boy and named him Vincent Willem van Gogh after Theo's brother. Around this time, Theo sold van Gogh's "The Red Vineyards" painting for 400 francs.

Also around this time, Dr. Paul Gachet, who lived in Auvers, about 20 miles north of Paris, agreed to take van Gogh as his patient. Van Gogh moved to Auvers and rented a room.

On July 27, 1890, Vincent van Gogh went out to paint in the morning carrying a loaded pistol and shot himself in the chest, but the bullet did not kill him. He was found bleeding in his room.

Van Gogh was distraught about his future because, in May of that year, his brother Theo had visited and spoke to him about needing to be stricter with his finances. Van Gogh took that to mean Theo was no longer interested in selling his art.

Van Gogh was taken to a nearby hospital and his doctors sent for Theo, who arrived to find his brother sitting up in bed and smoking a pipe. They spent the next couple of days talking together, and then van Gogh asked Theo to take him home.

On July 29, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died in the arms of his brother Theo. He was only 37 years old.

Theo, who was suffering from syphilis and weakened by his brother's death, died six months after his brother in a Dutch asylum. He was buried in Utrecht, but in 1914 Theo's wife, Johanna, who was a dedicated supporter of van Gogh's works, had Theo's body reburied in the Auvers cemetery next to Vincent.

Theo's wife Johanna then collected as many of van Gogh's paintings as she could, but discovered that many had been destroyed or lost, as van Gogh's own mother had thrown away crates full of his art.

On March 17, 1901, 71 of van Gogh's paintings were displayed at a show in Paris, and his fame grew enormously. His mother lived long enough to see her son hailed as an artistic genius. Today, Vincent van Gogh is considered one of the greatest artists in human history.

Van Gogh Museum

In 1973, the Van Gogh Museum opened its doors in Amsterdam to make the works of Vincent van Gogh accessible to the public. The museum houses more than 200 van Gogh paintings, 500 drawings and 750 written documents including letters to Vincent’s brother Theo. It features self-portraits, “The Potato Eaters,” “The Bedroom” and “Sunflowers.”

In September 2013, the museum discovered and unveiled a van Gogh painting of a landscape entitled "Sunset at Montmajour.” Before coming under the possession of the Van Gogh Museum, a Norwegian industrialist owned the painting and stored it away in his attic, having thought that it wasn't authentic.

The painting is believed to have been created by van Gogh in 1888 — around the same time that his artwork "Sunflowers" was made — just two years before his death.

Watch "Vincent Van Gogh: A Stroke of Genius" on HISTORY Vault

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Vincent van Gogh
• Birth Year: 1853
• Birth date: March 30, 1853
• Birth City: Zundert
• Birth Country: Netherlands
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Vincent van Gogh was one of the world’s greatest artists, with paintings such as ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Sunflowers,’ though he was unknown until after his death.
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Brussels Academy
• Nacionalities
• Interesting Facts
• Some of van Gogh's most famous works include "Starry Night," "Irises," and "Sunflowers."
• In a moment of instability, Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear and offered it to a prostitute.
• Van Gogh died in France at age 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
• Death Year: 1890
• Death date: July 29, 1890
• Death City: Auvers-sur-Oise
• Death Country: France

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Vincent van Gogh Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/vincent-van-gogh
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 4, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
• As for me, I am rather often uneasy in my mind, because I think that my life has not been calm enough; all those bitter disappointments, adversities, changes keep me from developing fully and naturally in my artistic career.
• I am a fanatic! I feel a power within me…a fire that I may not quench, but must keep ablaze.
• I get very cross when people tell me that it is dangerous to put out to sea. There is safety in the very heart of danger.
• I want to paint what I feel, and feel what I paint.
• As my work is, so am I.
• The love of art is the undoing of true love.
• When one has fire within oneself, one cannot keep bottling [it] up—better to burn than to burst. What is in will out.
• For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.
• I do not say that my work is good, but it's the least bad that I can do. All the rest, relations with people, is very secondary, because I have no talent for that. I can't help it.
• What is wrought in sorrow lives for all time.
• What I draw, I see clearly. In these [drawings] I can talk with enthusiasm. I have found a voice.
• Enjoy yourself too much rather than too little, and don't take art or love too seriously.
• But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

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Biography of Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh received a fragmentary education: one year at the village school in Zundert, two years at a boarding school in Zevenbergen, and eighteen months at a high school in Tilburg. At sixteen he began working at the Hague gallery of the French art dealers Goupil et Cie., in which his uncle Vincent was a partner. His brother Theo, who was born 1 May 1857, later worked for the same firm. In 1873 Goupil's transferred Vincent to London, and two years later they moved him to Paris, where he lost all ambition to become an art dealer. Instead, he immersed himself in religion, threw out his modern, worldly book, and became "daffy with piety", in the words of his sister Elisabeth. He took little interest in his work, and was dismissed from his job at the beginning of 1876.

Van Gogh then took a post as an assistant teacher in England, but, disappointed by the lack of prospects, returned to Holland at the end of the year. He now decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a clergyman. Although disturbed by his fanaticism and odd behavior, his parents agreed to pay for the private lessons he would need to gain admission to the university. This proved to be another false start. Van Gogh abandoned the lessons, and after brief training as an evangelist went to the Borinage coal-mining region in the south of Belgium. His ministry among the miners led him to identify deeply with the workers and their families. In 1897, however, his appointment was not renewed, and his parents despaired, regarding him as a social misfit. In an unguarded moment, his father even spoke of committing him to a mental asylum.

Vincent, too, was at his wits' end, and after a long period of solitary soul-searching in the Borinage he decided to follow Theo's advice and become an artist. His earlier desire to help his fellowman was an evangelist gradually developed into an urge, as he later wrote, to leave mankind "some memento in the form of drawings of paintings - not made to please any particular movement, but to express a sincere human feeling."

His parents could not go along with this latest change of course, and financial responsibility for Vincent passed to his brother Theo, who was now working in the Paris gallery of Boussod, Valadon et Cie., the successor to Goupil's. It was because of Theo's loyal support that Van Gogh later came to regard his oeuvre as the fruits of his brother's efforts on his behalf. A lengthy correspondence between the two brothers (which began in August 1872) would continue until the last days of Vincent's life.

When Van Gogh decided to become an artist, no one, not even himself, suspected that he had extraordinary gifts. His evolution from an inept but impassioned novice into a truly original master was remarkably rapid. He eventually proved to have an exceptional feel for bold, harmonious color effects, and an infallible instinct for choosing simple but memorable compositions.

In order to prepare for his new career, Van Gogh went to Brussels to study at the academy, but left after only nine months. There he got to know Anthon van Rappard, who was to be his most important artist friend during his Dutch period.

In April 1881, Van Gogh went to live with his parents in Etten in North Brabant, where he set himself the task of learning how to draw. He experimented endlessly with all sorts of drawing materials, and concentrated on mastering technical aspects of his craft like perspective, anatomy, and physiognomy. Most of his subjects were taken from peasant life.

At the end of 1881 he moved to The Hague, and there, too, he concentrated mainly on drawing. At first he took lessons from Anton Mauve, his cousin by marriage, but the two soon fell out, partly because Mauve was scandalized by Vincent's relationship with Sien Hoornik, a pregnant prostitute who already had an illegitimate child. Van Gogh made a few paintings while in The Hague , but drawing was his main passion. In order to achieve his ambition of becoming a figure painter, he drew from the live model whenever he could.

In September 1883 he decided to break off the relationship with Sien and follow in the footsteps of artists like Van Rappard and Mauve by trying his luck in the picturesque eastern province of Drenthe, which was fairly inaccessible in those days. After three months, however, a lack of both drawing materials and models forced him to leave. He decided once again to move in with his parents, who were now living in the North Brabant village of Nuenen, near Eindhoven.

In Nuenen, Van Gogh first began painting regularly, modeling himself chiefly on the French painter Jean-Francois Millet (1814 - 1875), who was famous throughout Europe for his scenes of the harsh life of peasants. Van Gogh set to work with an iron will, depicting the life of the villagers and humble workers. he made numerous scenes of weavers. In May 1884, he moved into rooms he had rented from the sacristan of local Catholic church, one of which he used as his studio.

At the end of 1884 he began painting and drawing a major series of heads and work-roughened peasant hands in preparation for a large and complex figure piece that he was planning. In April 1885 this period of study came to fruition in the masterpiece of his Dutch period, The Potato Eaters

In the summer of that year, he made a large number of drawings of the peasants working in the fields. The supply of models dried up, however, when the local priest forbade his parishioners to pose for the vicar's son. He turned to painting landscape instead, inspired in part by a visit to recently opened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

I feel - a failure. That's it as far as I'm concerned - I feel that this is the destiny that I accept, that will never change. ”

He nevertheless continued working hard during his two months in Auvers, producing dozens of paintings and drawings. On 27 July 1890, Vincent van Gogh was shot in the stomach, and passed away in the early morning of 29 July 1890 in his room at the Auberge Ravoux in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise. Although official history maintains that Van Gogh committed suicide, the latest research reveals that Van Gogh's death might be caused by an accident.

Theo, who had stored the bulk of Vincent's work in Paris, died six months later. His widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger (1862 - 1925), returned to Holland with the collection, and dedicated herself to getting her brother-in-law the recognition he deserved. In 1914, with his fame assured, she published Vincent van Gogh's letters between the two brothers.

The Starry Night

Café terrace at night, vincent van gogh's letters, van gogh self portrait, the starry night over the rhone, wheatfield with crows, the night cafe, the potato eaters, the yellow house, almond blossom, the church at auvers, at eternity's gate by vincent van gogh, portrait of dr. gachet, portrait of the postman joseph roulin by vincent van gogh, self portrait with bandaged ear.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Vincent van gogh (1853–1890).

Road in Etten

Vincent van Gogh

Nursery on Schenkweg

Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (obverse: The Potato Peeler)

The Potato Peeler (reverse: Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat)

Street in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

The Flowering Orchard

Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace

Wheat Field with Cypresses

Corridor in the Asylum

L'Arlésienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux (Marie Julien, 1848–1911)

La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle; Augustine-Alix Pellicot Roulin, 1851–1930)

Olive Trees

First Steps, after Millet

Department of European Paintings , The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004 (originally published) March 2010 (last revised)

Vincent van Gogh, the eldest son of a Dutch Reformed minister and a bookseller’s daughter, pursued various vocations, including that of an art dealer and clergyman, before deciding to become an artist at the age of twenty-seven. Over the course of his decade-long career (1880–90), he produced nearly 900 paintings and more than 1,100 works on paper. Ironically, in 1890, he modestly assessed his artistic legacy as of “very secondary” importance.

Largely self-taught, Van Gogh gained his footing as an artist by zealously copying prints and studying nineteenth-century drawing manuals and lesson books, such as Charles Bargue’s Exercises au fusain and cours de dessin . He felt that it was necessary to master black and white before working with color, and first concentrated on learning the rudiments of figure drawing and rendering landscapes in correct perspective. In 1882, he moved from his parents’ home in Etten to the Hague, where he received some formal instruction from his cousin, Anton Mauve, a leading Hague School artist. That same year, he executed his first independent works in watercolor and ventured into oil painting; he also enjoyed his first earnings as an artist: his uncle, the art dealer Cornelis Marinus van Gogh, commissioned two sets of drawings of Hague townscapes for which Van Gogh chose to depict such everyday sites as views of the railway station, gasworks, and nursery gardens ( 1972.118.281 ).

Van Gogh’s admiration for the Barbizon artists, in particular Jean-François Millet, influenced his decision to paint rural life. In the winter of 1884–85, while living with his parents in Nuenen, he painted more than forty studies of peasant heads, which culminated in his first multifigured, large-scale composition ( The Potato Eaters , Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam); in this gritty portrayal of a peasant family at mealtime, Van Gogh wrote that he sought to express that they “have tilled the earth themselves with the same hands they are putting in the dish.” Its dark palette and coarse application of paint typify works from the artist’s Nuenen period ( 67.187.70b ;  1984.393 ).

Interested in honing his skills as a figure painter, Van Gogh left the Netherlands in late 1885 to study at the Antwerp Academy in Belgium. Three months later, he departed for Paris, where he lived with his brother Theo, an art dealer with the firm of Boussod, Valadon et Cie, and for a time attended classes at Fernand Cormon’s studio. Van Gogh’s style underwent a major transformation during his two-year stay in Paris (February 1886–February 1888). There he saw the work of the Impressionists first-hand and also witnessed the latest innovations by the Neo-Impressionists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. In response, Van Gogh lightened his palette and experimented with the broken brushstrokes of the Impressionists as well as the pointillist touch of the Neo-Impressionists, as evidenced in the handling of his Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat ( 67.187.70a ), which was painted in the summer of 1887 on the reverse of an earlier peasant study ( 67.187.70b ). In Paris, he executed more than twenty self-portraits that reflect his ongoing exploration of complementary color contrasts and a bolder style.

In February 1888, Van Gogh departed Paris for the south of France, hoping to establish a community of artists in Arles. Captivated by the clarity of light and the vibrant colors of the Provençal spring, Van Gogh produced fourteen paintings of orchards in less than a month, painting outdoors and varying his style and technique. The composition and calligraphic handling of The Flowering Orchard ( 56.13 ) suggest the influence of Japanese prints , which Van Gogh collected. The artist’s debt to ukiyo-e prints is also apparent in the reed pen drawings he made in Arles, distinguished by their great verve and linear invention ( 48.190.1 ). In August, he painted the still lifes Oleanders ( 62.24 ) and Shoes ( 1992.374 ); each work resonates with the artist’s personal symbolism. For Van Gogh, oleanders were joyous and life-affirming (much like the sunflower); he reinforced their significance with the compositional prominence accorded to Émile Zola’s 1884 novel La joie de vivre . The still life of unlaced shoes, which Van Gogh had apparently hung in Paul Gauguin ‘s “yellow room” at Arles, suggested, to Gauguin, the artist himself—he saw them as emblematic of Van Gogh’s itinerant existence.

Gauguin joined Van Gogh in Arles in October and abruptly departed in late December 1888, a move precipitated by Van Gogh’s breakdown, during which he cut off part of his left ear with a razor. Upon his return from the hospital in January, he resumed working on a portrait of the wife of the postmaster Joseph Roulin; although he painted all the members of the Roulin family, Van Gogh produced five versions of Madame Roulin as La Berceuse , shown holding the rope that rocks her newborn daughter’s cradle ( 1996.435 ). He envisioned her portrait as the central panel of a triptych, flanked by paintings of sunflowers. For Van Gogh, her image transcended portraiture, symbolically resonating as a modern Madonna; of its palette, which ranges from ocher to vermilion and malachite, Van Gogh expressed his desire that it “sing a lullaby with color,” underscoring the expressive role of color in his art.

Fearing another breakdown, Van Gogh voluntarily entered the asylum at nearby Saint-Rémy in May 1889, where, over the course of the next year, he painted some 150 canvases. His initial confinement to the grounds of the hospital is reflected in his imagery, from his depictions of its corridors ( 48.190.2 ) to the irises and lilacs of its walled garden, visible from the window of the spare room he was allotted to use as a studio. Venturing beyond the grounds of the hospital, he painted the surrounding countryside, devoting series to its olive groves ( 1998.325.1 ) and cypresses, which he saw as characteristic of Provence. In June, he produced two paintings of cypresses, rendered in thick, impastoed layers of paint ( 49.30 ; Cypresses , Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo), likening the form of a cypress to an Egyptian obelisk in a letter to his brother Theo. These evocative trees figure prominently in a landscape, produced the same month ( 1993.132 ). Van Gogh regarded this work, with its sun-drenched wheat field undulating in the wind, as one of his “best” summer canvases. At Saint-Rémy, he also painted copies of works by such artists as Delacroix, Rembrandt , and Millet, using black-and-white photographs and prints. In fall and winter 1889–90, he executed twenty-one copies after Millet ( 64.165.2 ); he described his copies as “interpretations” or “translations,” comparing his role as an artist to that of a musician playing music written by another composer. During his last week at the asylum, he extended his repertoire of still life by painting four bouquets of Irises ( 58.187 ) and Roses ( 1993.400.5 ) as a final series comparable to the sunflower decoration he made earlier in Arles.

After a year at Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh left, in May 1890, to settle in Auvers-sur-Oise, where he was near his brother Theo in Paris and under the care of Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathic physician and amateur painter. In just over two months, Van Gogh averaged a painting a day; however, on July 27, 1890, he shot himself in the chest in a wheat field; he died two days later. His artistic legacy is preserved in the paintings and drawings he left behind, as well as in his voluminous correspondence, primarily with Theo, which lays bare his working methods and artistic intentions and serves as a reminder of his brother’s pivotal role as a mainstay of support throughout his career.

By the time of his death in 1890, Van Gogh’s work had begun to attract critical attention. His paintings were featured at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris between 1888 and 1890 and with Les XX in Brussels in 1890. As Gauguin wrote to him, his recent works, on view at the Indépendants in Paris, were regarded by many artists as “the most remarkable” in the show; and one of his paintings sold from the 1890 exhibition in Brussels. In January 1890, the critic Albert Aurier published the first full-length article on Van Gogh, aligning his art with the nascent Symbolist movement and highlighting the originality and intensity of his artistic vision. By the outbreak of World War I, with the discovery of his genius by the Fauves and German Expressionists, Vincent van Gogh had already come to be regarded as a vanguard figure in the history of modern art.

Department of European Paintings. “Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gogh/hd_gogh.htm (originally published October 2004, last revised March 2010)

Further Reading

Brooks, David. Vincent van Gogh: The Complete Works . CD-ROM. Sharon, Mass.: Barewalls Publications, 2002.

Dorn, Roland, et al. Van Gogh Face to Face: The Portraits . New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000.

Druick, Douglas W., et al. Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South . Exhibition catalogue. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001.

Ives, Colta, et al. Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings . Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005. See on MetPublications

Kendall, Richard. Van Gogh's Van Gogh's: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam . Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1998.

The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh . 3 vols. Boston: Bullfinch Press, 2000.

Pickvance, Ronald. Van Gogh in Arles . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984. See on MetPublications

Pickvance, Ronald. Van Gogh in Saint-Rémy and Auvers . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986. See on MetPublications

Selected and edited by Ronald de Leeuw. The Letters of Vincent van Gogh . London: Penguin, 2006.

Stein, Susan Alyson, ed. Van Gogh: A Retrospective . New York: New Line Books, 2006.

Stolwijk, Chris, and Richard Thomson. Theo van Gogh . Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 1999.

Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Online resource.

Additional Essays by Department of European Paintings

• Department of European Paintings. “ The Rediscovery of Classical Antiquity .” (October 2002)
• Department of European Paintings. “ Architecture in Renaissance Italy .” (October 2002)
• Department of European Paintings. “ Titian (ca. 1485/90?–1576) .” (October 2003)
• Department of European Paintings. “ The Papacy and the Vatican Palace .” (October 2002)

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• 19th Century A.D.
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Artist or Maker

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Online Features

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Biography Online

Vincent Van Gogh Biography

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890)

Vincent Van Gogh was an artist of exceptional talent. Influenced by impressionist painters of the period, he developed his own instinctive, spontaneous style. Van Gogh became one of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century and played a key role in the development of modern art.

“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.”

– Vincent Van Gogh (Letter to Theo, July 1882)

Short Biography Vincent Van Gogh

He was born in Groot-Zundert, a small town in Holland in March 1853. His father was a Protestant pastor and he had three uncles who were art dealers.

Despite disliking formal training, he studied art in both Brussels and Paris. His first attempts at art were not indicative of his later talent. In the beginning, he was a clumsy drawer and, when studying at one art academy, he was put back a year because of his perceived lack of ability to draw. His early pictures appear rather basic and do not show any sign of his later art. However, he worked hard and sought to improve his technique. Yet these early difficulties always stayed with Van Gogh and throughout his life, he was bothered with a sense of inadequacy. In a letter to his brother, he described his early efforts as mere ‘scribbles.’

He became absorbed in art and would prioritise it over more mundane matters. Van Gogh struggled to hold down a regular job. For example, he lost his position as an art dealer after quarrelling with a customer. He also had short-lived jobs as a supply teacher and priest. Not holding a regular job, he relied on financial help from his close brother Theo. Theo was generous to his brother throughout his life – often sending money and painting materials.

With his brothers financial backing, in 1888 Van Gogh travelled to Arles in the south of France, where he continued his painting – often outside – another feature of the impressionist movement. This was a prolific period for Van Gogh; he could paint up to five paintings per week and he enjoyed walking in the countryside and getting inspiration from nature – such as the corn harvest. He drew everything from nature, portraits of friends, everyday objects and the vast night sky.

Straw Harvest

Living in Paris (1886-88) he had been influenced by the new impressionist painters, such as Monet and Renoir, and their interest in light. However, he soon developed his own unique style of powerful, brush strokes – often using warm reds, oranges and yellows. Simple brush strokes which created strong and arresting images.

Van Gogh was driven by an inner urge to express the art he felt within. He wrote that he felt an artistic power within, which moved him to work very hard.

“Believe me, I work, I drudge, I grind all day long and I do so with pleasure, but I should get very much discouraged if I could not go on working as hard or even harder.. .I feel, Theo, that there is a power within me, and I do what I can to bring it out and free it.”

– Van Gogh, (Letter to Theo 1982)

Van Gogh lived from moment to moment and was never financially secure. He put his whole life into art and neglected other aspects of his life – such as his health, appearance and financial security. During his lifetime, he sold only one painting – ironic since now Van Gogh’s paintings are some of the most expensive in the world.

“What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came.”

– Van Gogh, Letter to Theo ( July 1880 )

Cafe Terrace at Night 1888 ( Kröller-Müller Museum)

“When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.”

– Vincent Van Gogh

In Arles, he had a brief, if unsuccessful, period of time with the artist Gauguin. Van Gogh’s intensity and mental imbalance made him difficult to live with. At the end of the two weeks, Van Gogh approached Gauguin with a razor blade. Gauguin fled back to Paris, and Van Gogh later cut off the lower part of his ear with the blade.

This action was symptomatic of his increasing mental imbalance. He was later committed to a lunatic asylum where he would spend time on and off until his death in 1890. At the best of times, Van Gogh had an emotional intensity that flipped between madness and genius. He himself wrote:

“Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant.”

Vase with 12 Sunflowers,  1888

It was during these last two years of his life that Van Gogh was at his most productive as a painter. He developed a style of painting that was quick and rapid – leaving no time for contemplation and thought. He painted with quick movements of the brush and drew increasingly avant-garde style shapes – foreshadowing modern art and its abstract style. He felt an overwhelming need and desire to paint.

“The work is an absolute necessity for me . I can’t put it off, I don’t care for anything but the work; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once and I become melancholy when I can’t go on with my work. Then I feel like a weaver who sees that his threads are tangled, and the pattern he had on the loom is gone to hell, and all his thought and exertion is lost.”

In 1890, a series of bad news affected his mental equilibrium and one day in July, whilst painting, he shot himself in the chest. He died two days later from his wound.

Yellow House

The religion of Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh was critical of formalised religion and was often scathing of clerics in the Christian church, but he denied he was an atheist, believing in God and love.

“That God of the clergymen, He is for me as dead as a doornail. But am I an atheist for all that? The clergymen consider me as such — be it so; but I love, and how could I feel love if I did not live, and if others did not live, and then, if we live, there is something mysterious in that.”

– Van Gogh

Van Gogh saw his painting as a spiritual pursuit. He wrote of great paintings, that the artist had hidden an aspect of God in the painting.

“Try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces, and you will again find God in them. One man has written or said it in a book, another in a painting.”

“I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it. But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things.”

– Vincent Van Gogh

Citation:  Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Vincent Van Gogh”, Oxford,  www.biographyonline.net. Published 23 May 2014. Last Updated 3 February 2020.

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Vincent van Gogh

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Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a Dutch post-impressionist artist whose paintings are amongst the most popular and recognizable in history. His dramatic brushwork, exuberant palette, and mastery at capturing moments in time and light revolutionised art. Only recognised at the end of his life, his struggles and triumphs have coloured exactly what we imagine it is to be an artist.

Works like Sunflowers , Café Terrace at Night , and The Starry Night have transcended the world of painting to become iconic symbols, not only of a single artist but a whole time period and art movement. Van Gogh's unique way of looking at the world was ahead of its time with the consequence that, unable to earn a living from his work or reconcile his doubts as to the value of his achievements and overcome his mental crisis, he committed suicide, alone and penniless. Not only did van Gogh leave the world the great gift of his visionary paintings but his letters, written to his younger brother Theo (1857-1891) and others, give us a fascinating and, at times, heartbreaking insight into how Vincent battled rejection, indifference, and self-harm to achieve his goals in art and life.

Van Gogh painted around 870 oil paintings in his short career, as well as sketches and watercolours. In addition, we have a tremendous amount of detail on what Vincent got up to when he was not painting thanks to him being a prolific letter writer. The artist wrote over 650 letters to Theo, and 41 replies survive from Theo. His younger brother helped him financially and with materials throughout his career; he also gave advice regarding his art and kept Vincent up-to-date with developments in the art world. Another 100 or so letters survive written to other relatives and artists. Many letters contain sketches that can reveal the planning stage of paintings and their dates. Then there are the 43 self-portraits. Neither the letters nor the portraits are unbiased, naturally, but they mean we can pursue the career of the artist from multiple directions besides mere paint and canvas.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, the Netherlands. His mother was Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819-1907) and his father, Theodorus (1822-1885), was a pastor in the Dutch Reformed Church. Significantly, three of Vincent's uncles worked in the art trade . Vincent did well at school in Zevenbergen and Tilburg, and he took an interest in drawing. His drawing master at Tilburg, C. C. Huysmans, not only encouraged Vincent to copy old paintings, as was standard practice, but also, unusually, to copy nature. None of his surviving early drawings suggests the great talent within. In July 1869, Vincent joined the firm Goupil & Cie in the Hague branch. The company sold art prints and originals. Vincent did well, and in January 1873, he was transferred to the Brussels branch. In June, he moved to the London branch. Vincent continued to sketch, visited the capital's many galleries, and developed a taste for English poetry.

Between 1874 and 1875, Vincent transferred to the Paris branch of Goupil's, then returned to London, then was back in Paris. All was not well, and he was dismissed in the spring of 1876. Next followed a teaching post in Ramsgate, England , and then a teaching role under the auspices of a Reverend Jones, which saw him preach in various villages outside London. Unable, it seems, to settle anywhere for very long, Vincent next turned up selling books in Dordrecht as 1876 came to a close. By now intent on a career in the Church, Vincent moved to Amsterdam in May 1877 to prepare for the theological entrance exam. Meanwhile, he continued to sketch, this time focussing on landscapes.

Van Gogh seems to have been determined to bring some kind of religious consolation to the peasantry, and in July 1878, he tried to become an evangelical missionary. Spending three months training in Brussels, Vincent was a poor speaker and was not given a post, but he went anyway to a mining town in the Borinage region of Belgium in December 1878. Eventually gaining official support, Vincent then promptly lost it in July 1879 when it was discovered he had given away practically all of his belongings to the poor. Vincent continued on his one-man mission for another 12 months until his religious zeal was quenched. His art continued in sketch form, especially of miners, and he studied art theory books to improve his draughtsmanship. At some point in 1879, he made the definitive decision to become a full-time artist. By October 1880, he was back in Brussels and hoping to join the Academy of Art there, but he soon ran out of cash and was obliged to return to his parents' home in Etten in April 1881. By 1882, a trip to The Hague and his artist cousin Anton Mauve (a prominent member of The Hague School) had given Vincent the courage to begin to paint in watercolours, a move encouraged by Theo. It was in this period that Vincent's advances towards his cousin Kee Vos-Stricker were rebuffed. A brief visit home ended with a quarrel with his father, possibly over Vincent not wanting to attend church anymore. Back in The Hague and with the help of Mauve, Vincent set up his first studio.

Vincent van Gogh: A Gallery of 30 Paintings

A full-time artist.

With his attic studio at Shenkweg, The Hague, Vincent began to use as a model a seamstress and former prostitute, Clasina Maria Hoornik (called Sien). Vincent and Sien then lived together, the artist also supporting Sien's mother and his model's two children, an act of kindness which neither his parents nor fellow artists in The Hague approved of. Cousin Mauve withdrew his support, perhaps not impressed with Vincent's progress and after the two had argued on how to improve the technical side of his drawing. Vincent continued his own methodology, studying illustrations and experimenting in lithography. One typical sketch of this period is an old man with his head in his hands in despair; Vincent gave it the title At Eternity's Gate . A mark of his progress was a commission from his uncle Cornelis Marinus for a series of views of The Hague. Then, a visit from Theo in August 1882, who brought him the supplies, led to a move into oil painting. This was a risk since oil paints were expensive, but Vincent persevered, and his letters show that he revelled in the exploration of colours.

Theo was now essentially paying for Vincent's living costs, and to lessen the burden in September 1883, the artist moved to a cheaper location, Drenthe, leaving behind Sien. Not staying long, Vincent moved around the Netherlands, painting landscapes and labourers at work in the fields.

In December 1883, Vincent was back with his parents at Nuenen, although his studio was in the village. Theodorus van Gogh died in March 1885, and this put further strain on the artist's relationship with his family. He continued to paint, notably winter scenes and local weavers. A commission came for six sketches of peasant life, an all too rare case of Vincent contributing to his living costs, which were now being met by Theo with regular monthly payments. Another small source of cash was Vincent teaching a handful of local artists. Another episode of unrequited love hit Vincent when his marriage proposal to Margot Begemann, a neighbour, was refused, largely because of the disapproval of her family. Artistically, Vincent's work was maturing, and in April 1885, he produced his first great canvas, The Potato Eaters , a work he himself highly valued. He was also experimenting with brighter colours. In November 1885, Vincent was looking for new ideas, and he left for Antwerp, then in March 1886, after an unsuccessful stint studying at the Academy, he moved on to the very centre of the European art world in the late 19th century: Paris.

Vincent joined up with Theo in Paris, and the pair shared an apartment for the next two years. From his arrival in March, Vincent visited galleries, and he learnt first-hand from fellow artists of the new movement in art – impressionism – and its preoccupation with light and capturing a particular scene at a particular moment with quick brushstrokes and dramatic colours. Vincent studied under the painter Félix Cormon, copying plaster casts and exploring colours in still life works of flowers. He also encountered the Japanese prints that had become popular in Europe and which he greatly admired for their boldness of colour and composition. He painted panoramas of Paris, especially Montmartre, a whole series of windmills, and the first of his many self-portraits.

Vincent struggled to get any of his paintings exhibited, except by friends of the impressionists like "Père" Tanguy (1825-1894), who owned an art supplies shop in Montmartre, accepting paintings as payment for materials. Vincent painted Tanguy three times. Vincent organised his own exhibition of modern artists in the rooms of a restaurant in November-December 1887, showing many of his own paintings and by fellow artists like Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). A few of the other works were sold, but none of Vincent's. The artist did sell a still life to a dealer in this period, and he often paid for meals in cafés by giving the proprietor a painting. His now-famous Self-portrait with Grey Hat (1887-8) belongs to this period, and the bold brushstrokes and use of colours demonstrate what is yet to come.

Southern France

Tired of the rivalry between artists in Paris and seeking warmer weather to boost his frail health, Vincent moved to Arles in the south of France in February 1888, where he began by far the most productive period of his career, rattling off countless paintings. While not isolated from company, Vincent did struggle to make meaningful relations with southern artists. Instead, he befriended people like Joseph Roulin, the local postman who he painted several times.

Vincent was impressed with the sunlight of southern France, and his palette was now bright and bold. The subjects are much simpler in composition than previous works (although he curiously ignored the many Roman ruins of the region). In the spring, he captured blossom trees in works like Pink Peach Trees . As summer came on, the sun and yellow fields were brilliantly captured in such works as the Sower with Setting Sun . He painted seascapes and captured more local colour at Sainte-Maries-de-la-Mer. Arles, though, dominates with scenes depicted in fiercely contrasting and saturated colours like the yellow and blue of the Café Terrace at Night and the red and green of The Night Café . By August, he had begun his startling series of sunflowers, created as a mere decoration for his home, the Yellow House. September's Starry Night over the Rhône shows that the artist is undaunted by the practicalities of impressionistic plein air (open-air) painting. His colours are now intense, the form and space are often exaggerated. Vivid monochrome backgrounds, often textured to contrast with the smoother main subject, mix with swirling brushstrokes of liberally-applied paint. He has blended impressionism with symbolism, where a painting is created to provoke the imagination and prompt an emotional response from the viewer. The inimitable van Gogh style has arrived.

Mental Instability

Vincent hoped to form an artist's community in Arles, and he invited such young painters as Gauguin and Emile Bernard (1868-1941). The former did come to Arles in October 1888, and the pair lived and worked together, both funded by Theo. The two painters influenced each other – Vincent's bright colours on Gauguin's palette, and Gauguin's encouragement that the Dutchman experiment with different subjects. Cooped up indoors as the mistral wind blew, the two strong characters often clashed, especially over art; Vincent described their arguments as "electric," and Gauguin describes even threats of violence. The crisis came on 23 December. After yet another argument, Gauguin spent the night in a hotel, and when he returned to the Yellow House the next morning, he was surprised to see the police. During the night, Vincent had cut off a part of his ear and presented it to a local prostitute. He was sent to hospital, and Theo was summoned from Paris. Gauguin left Arles immediately after the incident. Vincent put the attack down to a fever and lack of nutrition; by January, he was back painting, but more attacks of his illness, whatever it was, would follow.

In May 1889, Vincent voluntarily admitted himself to the asylum of Saint- Paul -de-Mausole in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Still the artist suffered attacks, but in between, he was permitted to continue painting. Like his spirits, Vincent's palette is now noticeably muted. Perhaps this return to more sober works was an attempt to recapture his earlier ambition of becoming a painter of northern peasant life. It may also be significant that he now created a new version of The Potato Eaters . Doctors at the asylum diagnosed the artist's illness as epilepsy. Studies in the 20th and 21st century have come up with other theories for the artist's mental instability, notably schizophrenia or the effects of syphilis (he was treated for a venereal disease while in The Hague) or overconsumption of absinthe or a combination of all four maladies. In his own letters, Vincent mentions "the artist's madness" (LT 574), but he makes little connection between his illness and his work; he treats them as being quite independent.

Making some improvement healthwise, Vincent was permitted to paint in the nearby fields and olive orchards, but another attack occurred during which he ate some of his oil paints. Intermittent attacks followed through to February 1890, and the recovery periods lengthened. In May 1890, following consultation with Theo and on the advice of Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Vincent went to consult with Dr Paul Gachet (1828-1909) in Auvers-sur-Oise in northern France. Gachet was a physician, heart specialist, and advocate of homoeopathy, he was also a good friend of the impressionists. Vincent stayed in a local inn and regularly visited Gachet, painting his portrait and the many flowers in his garden. Perhaps sensitive to an end of things, the artist was more prolific than ever, painting a new canvas almost every day.

Death & Legacy

On 27 July, van Gogh, after painting in a field, suffered another attack. He shot himself in the chest with a pistol but managed to drag himself back to his inn. Theo was once again called. Vincent was still alive when his brother arrived, but he died from his wound in the morning of 29 July. An added tragedy was that the artist was just beginning to arouse the interest of art critics. A few months prior to his death, some of Vincent's works had been exhibited in Paris and Brussels (where he sold a painting). The fallen artist was buried in the cemetery of Auvers.

Vincent van Gogh's works were exhibited from as early as the 1890s in Amsterdam, Paris, and elsewhere as the symbolism movement took off. Van Gogh came to be seen by some as a bridge between impressionism, with its concern with transient light and colour, and expressionism, which saw artists attempt to convey their exaggerated inner emotional turmoil. He is generally classed as a post-impressionist painter, someone who uses the techniques of impressionism but is also interested in symbolism and permanent emotional expression in their work. Whatever group he is placed within in the history of art, the public and collectors were in no doubt as to the value of his contribution. Van Gogh's paintings have commanded a price tag of millions of dollars at auctions from the mid-20th century onwards.

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Van Gogh is much more than just an artist, though. His choice to sign some of his paintings with a simple 'Vincent' has, along with his instantly recognisable style, his candid letters, and painful struggles with mental health, given the artist's life an intimacy that has helped personalise the relationship between artist and viewer like no other. The 'mad genius,' the 'tortured artist,' and the 'unrecognised talent' are all ideas that the van Gogh myth has contributed to world art and culture regardless of their validity. Few artists have captured our imaginations and intrigued us just as much by their lives as by their art like Vincent van Gogh has. This empathy is, perhaps, no accident, for it is precisely what Vincent strived to achieve: "I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart" (LT 218D).

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Bibliography

• Bouruet Aubortot, Veronique. Impressionism. Flammarion, 2017.
• Denvir, Bernard. Post-Impressionism . Thames & Hudson, 1992.
• Howard, Michael. Encyclopedia of Impressionism. Thunder Bay Pr, 1997.
• McQuillan, Melissa & Van Gogh, Vincent. Van Gogh . Thames & Hudson, 1989.
• Metzger, Rainer & Walther, Ingo F. Van Gogh. La obra completa - pintura . TASCHEN, 2015.
• Roe, Sue. The Private Lives of the Impressionists. Harper Perennial, 2007.
• Thomson, Belinda. Impressionism. Thames & Hudson, 2022.
• Van Gogh, Vincent (ed. Leeuw). The Letters of Vincent van Gogh . Penguin Classics, 1998.

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Vincent van Gogh

ARTISTS (1853–1890); ZUNDERT, NETHERLANDS

The prolific yet short-lived career of Vincent van Gogh has captivated the art world nearly as much as his actual paintings have. From his birth in the Netherlands to his death in France—not to mention the infamous ear incident of 1888—the Dutch post-impressionist painter was a creative force of nature who took a little longer than other artists of the era to find his calling. Now, his life has been immortalized in movies, songs, and countless art exhibits, but, as is the case with so many great artists, van Gogh wasn't celebrated much while he was alive. Find out more about the fascinating man behind The Starry Night and Sunflowers below.

1. Most of Vincent van Gogh’s paintings were done in a single decade.

Vincent Willem van Gogh grew up in the Netherlands and joined an art firm called Goupil & Cie in The Hague in 1869, when he was just 16 years old. Four years later, Goupil & Cie sent him to deal art in London, but it was never a good fit—van Gogh couldn’t muster enthusiasm for the business side of art, and he was fired in 1876. After trying his hand at teaching and even preaching, he turned to what he’d soon realize was his true vocation: painting. Largely self-taught, van Gogh painted nearly 900 works between November 1881 and July 1890, when he died at age 37.

2. Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night in an asylum.

Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de Mausole Asylum near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, after a mental breakdown in late 1888. He painted The Starry Night based on the view from his second-story bedroom window—with a few significant modifications. For one, he omitted the iron bars that were almost definitely fastened to the window, since he mentioned “the iron-barred window” in a letter to his brother Theo the previous month. And he added a lovely, moonlit town in the distance, which he wouldn’t have been able to see from his window. Some historians think he modeled the village on earlier sketches he had done of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, while others believe it was inspired by the Netherlands, where van Gogh was born.

3. Nine paintings from Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers series still exist.

Van Gogh painted two series of Sunflowers . He completed the first series—four paintings known as the Paris Sunflowers , which all depict the flowers lying on the ground—while living with Theo in Paris in the mid-1880s. Then, when he moved into a yellow house in Arles in 1888, he set to work on what’s now called the Arles Sunflowers , which display floral arrangements in vases. He planned to decorate the house with the sunflower paintings to please fellow painter Paul Gauguin, who would visit him there. Originally, van Gogh had painted seven Sunflowers in Arles, but one was destroyed in a fire during World War II, and another was lost after it was sold into a private collection.

4. Historians aren’t sure exactly why Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear.

Everybody agrees the infamous incident took place on December 23, 1888, while van Gogh was living in Arles, France, with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, but there are several theories as to why van Gogh took a knife or razor to his own ear that fateful night—as well as how much he cut off, and who was the recipient of history’s most revolting gift. The leading theory is that van Gogh was distraught after a quarrel with Gauguin, though others believe it was a reaction to learning his beloved brother Theo was getting married. Some even think it was Gauguin who did the slicing.

Also, while it’s possible that van Gogh only lopped off the lobe, his physician sketched an image that shows van Gogh’s entire ear is missing. Circumstances notwithstanding, van Gogh then brought his mutilated ear to a woman in a nearby brothel—long thought to be a prostitute, though recent evidence suggests she was likely a barmaid—and asked her to guard it carefully.

5. Vincent van Gogh died from a (likely) self-inflicted gunshot wound in France.

Van Gogh’s auricular accident of 1888 may be due to the fact that he was likely dealing with an undiagnosed health issue at the time. The particular mental and/or physical illness van Gogh suffered from isn’t known—though a doctor did once diagnose him with a form of epilepsy—but suggestions include dementia, hallucinatory psychosis, alcoholism, syphilis, turpentine poisoning, schizophrenia, manic-depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, and more.

On July 27, 1890, while living in the French village Auvers-sur-Oise, van Gogh walked into a field and shot himself in the abdomen. He was able to make it back to the inn where he was staying, but he died from the wound two days later, with Theo by his side. He was just 37 years old. Some have theorized  van Gogh was shot by someone else, but it’s generally believed the artist was responsible for his own death.

6. Vincent van Gogh didn’t sell many paintings commercially while he was alive.

Van Gogh is a pretty classic example of someone who didn’t see commercial success during his lifetime. Apart from the 19 cityscapes of The Hague that his uncle commissioned him to make early in his career, van Gogh only sold a few paintings while he was alive—one to Parisian art dealer Julien Tanguy, one that Theo sold to a London gallery, and a third, The Red Vineyard , to the sister of van Gogh’s friend, Eugène Boch.

That said, van Gogh did often trade works to other artists in exchange for food or supplies, so his paintings definitely weren’t unknown or unappreciated. Much of van Gogh’s art went to Theo after his death, but Theo himself died just a year later. At that point, Theo’s widow, Johanna, began working to organize exhibitions and promote the art of her brother-in-law across Europe, which eventually led to more mainstream success for the already-deceased artist.

A Selection of Vincent van Gogh’s Paintings

• Still Life With Cabbage and Clogs (1881)
• Dunes (1882)
• Girl in the Woods (1882)
• Cottages (1883)
• Weaver Facing Left With Spinning Wheel (1884)
• Cart with Red and White Ox (1884)
• Vase With Honesty (1884-1885)
• Head of an Old Peasant Woman With White Cap (1884)
• The Potato Eaters (1885)
• Skull of a Skeleton With Burning Cigarette (1886)
• A Pair of Shoes (1886)
• Self-Portrait (1886)
• Japonaiserie: The Courtesan (1887)
• Sunflowers (1886-1888)
• The Sower (1888)
• Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin (1888)
• The Night Café (1888)
• The Café Terrace at Night (1888)
• Starry Night Over the Rhône (1888)
• Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (1888)
• Bedroom in Arles (1888)
• Paul Gauguin (Man in a Red Beret) (1888)
• Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear (1889)
• Irises (1889)
• The Starry Night (1889)
• Cypresses (1889)
• Wheat Field With Reaper and Sun (1889)
• Olive Grove (1889)
• At Eternity’s Gate (1890)
• Houses in Auvers (1890)
• The Church at Auvers (1890)
• Portrait of Dr. Gachet (1890)

Notable Quotes by Vincent van Gogh

• “Success is sometimes the outcome of a whole string of failures.”
• “It’s certainly true that it is better to be fervent in spirit, even if one accordingly makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and overly cautious.”
• “[The] great isn’t something accidental; it must be willed.”
• “The sight of the stars always makes me dream.”
• “Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music.”
• “The more I think about it the more I feel that there’s nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.”
• “It is good to love as much as one can, for therein lies true strength, and he who loves much does much and is capable of much, and that which is done with love is well done.”
• “There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we didn’t dare to take things in hand?”
• “I seek, I pursue, my heart is in it.”

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch Draftsman and Painter

Summary of Vincent van Gogh

The iconic tortured artist, Vincent Van Gogh strove to convey his emotional and spiritual state in each of his artworks. Although he sold only one painting during his lifetime, Van Gogh is now one of the most popular artists of all time. His canvases with densely laden, visible brushstrokes rendered in a bright, opulent palette emphasize Van Gogh's personal expression brought to life in paint. Each painting provides a direct sense of how the artist viewed each scene, interpreted through his eyes, mind, and heart. This radically idiosyncratic, emotionally evocative style has continued to affect artists and movements throughout the 20 th century and up to the present day, guaranteeing Van Gogh's importance far into the future.

Accomplishments

• Van Gogh's dedication to articulating the inner spirituality of man and nature led to a fusion of style and content that resulted in dramatic, imaginative, rhythmic, and emotional canvases that convey far more than the mere appearance of the subject.
• Although the source of much upset during his life, Van Gogh's mental instability provided the frenzied source for the emotional renderings of his surroundings and imbued each image with a deeper psychological reflection and resonance.
• Van Gogh's unstable personal temperament became synonymous with the romantic image of the tortured artist. His self-destructive talent was echoed in the lives of many artists in the 20 th century.
• Van Gogh used an impulsive, gestural application of paint and symbolic colors to express subjective emotions. These methods and practice came to define many subsequent modern movements from Fauvism to Abstract Expressionism .

The Life of Vincent van Gogh

Vincent expressed his life via his works. As he famously said, "real painters do not paint things as they are... they paint them as they themselves feel them to be."

Important Art by Vincent van Gogh

The Potato Eaters

This early canvas is considered Van Gogh's first masterpiece. Painted while living among the peasants and laborers in Nuenen in the Netherlands, Van Gogh strove to depict the people and their lives truthfully. Rendering the scene in a dull palette, he echoed the drab living conditions of the peasants and used ugly models to further iterate the effects manual labor had upon these workers. This effect is heightened by his use of loose brushstrokes to describe the faces and hands of the peasants as they huddle around the singular, small lantern, eating their meager meal of potatoes. Despite the evocative nature of the scene, the painting was not considered successful until after Van Gogh's death. At the time this work was painted, the Impressionists had dominated the Parisian avant-garde for over a decade with their light palettes. It is not surprising that Van Gogh's brother, Theo, found it impossible to sell paintings from this period in his brother's career. However, this work not only demonstrates Van Gogh's commitment to rendering emotionally and spiritually laden scenes in his art, but also established ideas that Van Gogh followed throughout his career.

Oil on canvas - The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The Courtesan (after Eisen)

While in Paris, Van Gogh was exposed to a myriad of artistic styles, including the Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints. These prints were only made available in the West in the mid-19 th century. Van Gogh collected works by Japanese ukiyo-e masters like Hiroshige and Hokusai and claimed these works were as important as works by European artists, like Rubens and Rembrandt. Van Gogh was inspired to create this particular painting by a reproduction of a print by Keisai Eisen that appeared on the May 1886 cover of the magazine Paris Illustré . Van Gogh enlarges Eisen's image of the courtesan, placing her in a contrasting, golden background bordered by a lush water garden based on the landscapes of other prints he owned. This particular garden is populated by frogs and cranes, both of which were allusions to prostitutes in French slang. While the stylistic features exhibited in this painting, in particular the strong, dark outlines and bright swaths of color, came to define Van Gogh's mature style, he also made the work his own. By working in paint rather than a woodblock print, Van Gogh was able to soften the work, relying on visible brushstrokes to lend dimension to the figure and her surroundings as well as creating a dynamic tension across the surface not present in the original prints.

Café Terrace At Night

This was one of the scenes Van Gogh painted during his stay in Arles and a painting where he used his powerful nocturnal background. Using contrasting colors and tones, Van Gogh achieved a luminous surface that pulses with an interior light, almost in defiance of the darkening sky. The lines of composition all point to the center of the work drawing the eye along the pavement as if the viewer is strolling the cobblestone streets. The café still exists today and is a "mecca" for van Gogh fans visiting the south of France. Describing this painting in a letter to his sister he wrote, "Here you have a night painting without black, with nothing but beautiful blue and violet and green and in this surrounding the illuminated area colors itself sulfur pale yellow and citron green. It amuses me enormously to paint the night right on the spot..." Painted on the street at night, Van Gogh recreated the setting directly from his observations, a practice inherited from the Impressionists. However, unlike the Impressionists, he did not record the scene merely as his eye observed it, but imbued the image with a spiritual and psychological tone that echoed his individual and personal reaction. The brushstrokes vibrate with the sense of excitement and pleasure Van Gogh experienced while painting this work.

Oil on canvas - Kröller-Muller Museum, Otterlo

Van Gogh's Sunflower series was intended to decorate the room that was set aside for Gauguin at the "Yellow House," his studio and apartment in Arles. The lush brushstrokes built up the texture of the sunflowers and Van Gogh employed a wide spectrum of yellows to describe the blossoms, due in part to recently invented pigments that made new colors and tonal nuances possible. Van Gogh used the sunny hues to express the entire lifespan of the flowers, from the full bloom in bright yellow to the wilting and dying blossoms rendered in melancholy ochre. The traditional painting of a vase of flowers is given new life through Van Gogh's experimentation with line and texture, infusing each sunflower with the fleeting nature of life, the brightness of the Provencal summer sun, as well as the artist's mindset.

Oil on canvas - The National Gallery, London

The Bedroom

Van Gogh's Bedroom depicts his living quarters at 2 Place Lamartine, Arles, known as the "Yellow House". It is one of his most well known images. His use of bold and vibrant colors to depict the off-kilter perspective of his room demonstrated his liberation from the muted palette and realistic renderings of the Dutch artistic tradition, as well as the pastels commonly used by the Impressionists. He labored over the subject matter, colors, and arrangements of this composition, writing many letters to Theo about it, "This time it's just simply my bedroom, only here color is to do everything, and giving by its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination." While the bright yellows and blues might at first seem to echo a sense of disquiet, the bright hues call to mind a sunny summer day, evoking as sense of warmth and calm, as Van Gogh intended. This personal interpretation of a scene in which particular emotions and memories drive the composition and palette is a major contribution to modernist painting.

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear

After cutting off a portion of his left earlobe during a manic episode while in Arles, Van Gogh painted Self Portrait with a Bandaged Ear while recuperating and reflecting on his illness. He believed that the act of painting would help restore balance to his life, demonstrating the important role that artistic creation held for him. The painting bears witness to the artist's renewed strength and control in his art, as the composition is rendered with uncharacteristic realism, where all his facial features are clearly modeled and careful attention is given to contrasting textures of skin, cloth, and wood. The artist depicts himself in front of an easel with a canvas that is largely blank and a Japanese print hung on the wall. The loose and expressive brushstrokes typical of Van Gogh are clearly visible; the marks are both choppy and sinuous, at times becoming soft and diffuse, creating a tension between boundaries that are otherwise clearly marked. The strong outlines of his coat and hat mimic the linear quality of the Japanese print behind the artist. At the same time, Van Gogh deployed the technique of impasto, or the continual layering of wet paint, to develop a richly textured surface, which furthers the depth and emotive force of the canvas. This self-portrait, one of many Van Gogh created during his career, has an intensity unparalleled in its time, which is elucidated in the frank manner in which the artist portrays his self-inflicted wound as well as the evocative way he renders the scene. By combining influences as diverse as the loose brushwork of the Impressionists and the strong outlines from Japanese woodblock printing, Van Gogh arrived at a truly unique mode of expression in his paintings.

Oil on canvas - The Courtauld Gallery, London

Starry Night

Starry Night is often considered to be Van Gogh's pinnacle achievement. Unlike most of his works, Starry Night was painted from memory, and not out in the landscape. The emphasis on interior, emotional life is clear in his swirling, tumultuous depiction of the sky - a radical departure from his previous, more naturalistic landscapes. Here, Van Gogh followed a strict principal of structure and composition in which the forms are distributed across the surface of the canvas in an exact order to create balance and tension amidst the swirling torsion of the cypress trees and the night sky. The result is a landscape rendered through curves and lines, its seeming chaos subverted by a rigorous formal arrangement. Evocative of the spirituality Van Gogh found in nature, Starry Night is famous for advancing the act of painting beyond the representation of the physical world.

Oil on canvas - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Church at Auvers

After Van Gogh left the asylum at Saint-Remy in May 1890 he travelled north to Auvers, outside of Paris. Church at Auvers is one of the most well-known images from the last few months of Van Gogh's life. Imbuing the landscape with movement and emotion, he rendered the scene with a palette of vividly contrasting colors and brushstrokes that lead the viewer through painting. Van Gogh distorted and flattened out the architecture of the church and depicted it caught within its own shadow - which reflects his own complex relationship to spirituality and religion. Van Gogh conveys a sense that true spirituality is found in nature, not in the buildings of man. The continued influence of Japanese woodblock printing is clear in the thick dark outlines and the flat swaths of color of the roofs and landscape, while the visible brushstrokes of the Impressionists are elongated and emphasized. The use of the acidic tones and the darkness of the church alludes to the impending mental disquiet that would eventually erupt within Van Gogh and lead to his suicide. This sense of instability plagued Van Gogh throughout his life, infusing his works with a unique blend of charm and tension.

Oil on canvas - Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Paul-Ferdinand Gachet

Dr. Gachet was the homeopathic physician that treated Van Gogh after he was released from Saint-Remy. In the doctor, the artist found a personal connection, writing to his sister, "I have found a true friend in Dr. Gachet, something like another brother, so much do we resemble each other physically and also mentally." Van Gogh depicts Gachet seated at a red table, with two yellow books and foxglove in a vase near his elbow. The doctor gazes past the viewer, his eyes communicating a sense of inner sadness that reflects not only the doctor's state of mind, but Van Gogh's as well. Van Gogh focused the viewer's attention on the depiction of the doctor's expression by surrounding his face with the subtly varied blues of his jacket and the hills of the background. Van Gogh wrote to Gauguin that he desired to create a truly modern portrait, one that captured the "the heartbroken expression of our time." Rendering Gachet's expression through a blend of melancholy and gentility, Van Gogh created a portrait that has resonated with viewers since its creation. A recent owner, Ryoei Saito, even claimed he planned to have the painting cremated with him after his death, as he was so moved by the image. The intensity of emotion that Van Gogh poured into each brushstroke is what has made his work so compelling to viewers over the decades, inspiring countless artists and individuals.

Oil on canvas - Private Collection

Biography of Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was born the second of six children into a religious Dutch Reformed Church family in the south of the Netherlands. His father, Theodorus Van Gogh, was a clergyman and his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus, was the daughter of a bookseller. Van Gogh exhibited unstable moods during his childhood, and showed no early inclination toward art-making, though he excelled at languages while attending two boarding schools. In 1868, he abandoned his studies and never successfully returned to formal schooling.

Early Training

In 1869, Van Gogh apprenticed at the headquarters of the international art dealers Goupil & Cie in Paris and eventually worked at the Hague branch of the firm. He was relatively successful as an art dealer and stayed with the firm for almost a decade. In 1872, Van Gogh began exchanging letters with his younger brother Theo. This correspondence continued through the end of Vincent's life. The following year, Theo himself became an art dealer, and Vincent was transferred to the London office of Goupil & Cie. Around this time, Vincent became depressed and turned to God.

After several transfers between London and Paris, Van Gogh was let go from his position at Goupil's and decided to pursue a life in the clergy. While living in southern Belgium as a poor preacher, he gave away his possessions to the local coal-miners until the church dismissed him because of his overly enthusiastic commitment to his faith. In 1880, Van Gogh decided he could be an artist and still remain in God's service, writing, "To try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God; one man wrote or told it in a book; another, in a picture." Van Gogh was still a pauper, but Theo sent him some money for survival. Theo financially supported his elder brother his entire career, as Vincent made virtually no money from making art.

A year later, in 1881, dire poverty motivated Van Gogh to move back home with his parents, where he taught himself to draw. He became infatuated with his cousin, Kee Vos-Stricker. His continued pursuit of her affection, despite utter rejection, eventually split the family. With the support of Theo, Van Gogh moved to the Hague, rented a studio, and studied under Anton Mauve - a leading member of the Hague School. Mauve introduced Van Gogh to the work of the French painter Jean-François Millet , who was renowned for depicting common laborers and peasants.

In January 1882, while wandering the streets of The Hague, Van Gogh encountered a young prostitute (who also worked as a seamstress and housecleaner) by the name of Clasina Maria Hoornik. He soon came to refer to her as Christien, which he then shortened to, simply, Sien. She was destitute, addicted to alcohol, pregnant, and had her five year-old daughter Maria Wilhelmina, in tow. Van Gogh took pity on her, and took her into his care for the next year and a half. This dismayed his friends and family, and some of his patrons and benefactors, including his cousin-in-law Anton Mauve, and art dealer Hermanus Tersteeg, abruptly withdrew their support for him.

While Sien's account of their relationship portrays it as one merely of convenience and benevolence, it seems that Van Gogh felt more of a connection, and even had plans to marry her. In return for his support, Sien (as well as her children and mother) modeled for over fifty of Van Gogh's works, such as his 1882 drawing Sorrow , in which Sien appears pregnant, and which the artist once called "the best figure I've drawn". It seems, however, that what Van Gogh valued about her was the challenging life she had faced (she had during her life, become pregnant four different times by four different men, all of whom had abandoned her, and two of the children had died during infancy). He once referred to her as "pockmarked" and "no longer beautiful”, and often depicted her frowning, and in difficult or unflattering situations. Sien and her family also appeared in Van Gogh’s 1883 series The Public Soup Kitchen .

Mature Period

In 1884, after moving to Nuenen, Netherlands, Van Gogh began drawing the weathered hands, heads, and other anatomical features of workers and the poor, determined to become a painter of peasant life like Millet. Although he found a professional calling, his personal life was in shambles. Van Gogh accused Theo of not trying hard enough to sell his paintings, to which Theo replied that Vincent's dark palette was out of vogue compared to the bold and bright style of the Impressionist artists that was popular. Suddenly, on March 26, 1885, their father died from a stroke, putting pressure on Van Gogh to have a successful career. Shortly afterward, he completed the Potato Eaters (1885), his first large-scale composition and great work.

Leaving the Netherlands for the last time, in 1885 Van Gogh enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. There he discovered the art of Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens , whose swirling forms and loose brushwork had a clear impact on the young artist's style. However, the rigidity of academicism of the school did not appeal to Van Gogh and he left for Paris the following year. He moved in with Theo in Montmartre - the artist's district in northern Paris - and studied with painter Fernand Cormon, who introduced the young artist to the Impressionists. The influence of artists such as Claude Monet , Camille Pissarro , Edgar Degas , and Georges Seurat , as well as pressure from Theo to sell paintings, motivated Van Gogh to adopt a lighter palette.

From 1886 to 1888, Van Gogh became acutely interested in Japanese prints and began to avidly study and collect them, even curating an exhibition of them at a Parisian restaurant. In late 1887, Van Gogh organized an exhibition that included his work and that of his colleagues Emile Bernard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , and in early 1888, he exhibited with the Neo-impressionists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac at the Salle de Repetition of the Theatre Libre d'Antoine.

Late Years and Death

The majority of Van Gogh's best-known works were produced during the final two years of his life. During the fall and winter of 1888, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin lived and worked together in Arles in the south of France, where Van Gogh eventually rented four rooms at 2 Place Lamartine, which was dubbed the "Yellow House" for its citron hue. The move to Provence began as a plan for a new artist's community in Arles as alternative to Paris and came at a critical point in each of the artists' careers. While at the "Yellow House" Gauguin and Van Gogh worked closely together and developed a concept of color symbolic of inner emotion and not dependent upon nature. Despite enormous productivity, Van Gogh suffered from various bouts of mental instability, likely including epilepsy, psychotic episodes, delusions, and bipolar disorder. Gauguin left for Tahiti, partially as a means of escaping Van Gogh's increasingly erratic behavior. The artist slipped away after a particularly violent fight in which Van Gogh threatened Gauguin with a razor and then cut off part of his own left ear.

On May 8, 1889, reeling from his deteriorating mental condition, Van Gogh voluntarily committed himself into a psychiatric institution in Saint-Remy, near Arles. As the weeks passed, his mental well-being remained stable and he was allowed to resume painting. This period became one of his most productive. In the year spent at Saint-Remy, Van Gogh created over 100 works, including Starry Night (1889). The clinic and its garden became his main subjects, rendered in the dynamic brushstrokes and lush palettes typical of his mature period. On supervised walks, Van Gogh immersed himself in the experience of the natural surroundings, later recreating from memory the olive and cypress trees, irises, and other flora that populated the clinic's campus.

Shortly after leaving the clinic, Van Gogh moved north to Auvers-sur-Oise outside of Paris, to the care of a homeopathic doctor and amateur artist, Dr. Gachet. The doctor encouraged Van Gogh to paint as part of his recovery, and he happily obliged. He avidly documented his surroundings in Auvers, averaging roughly a painting a day over the last months of his life. However, after Theo disclosed his plan to go into business for himself and explained funds would be short for a while, Van Gogh's depression deepened sharply. On July 27, 1890, he wandered into a nearby wheat field and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Although Van Gogh managed to struggle back to his room, his wounds were not treated properly and he died in bed two days later. Theo rushed to be at his brother's side during his last hours and reported that his final words were: "The sadness will last forever."

The Legacy of Vincent van Gogh

Clear examples of Van Gogh's wide influence can be seen throughout art history. The Fauves and the German Expressionists worked immediately after Van Gogh and adopted his subjective and spiritually inspired use of color. The Abstract Expressionists of the mid-20 th century made use of Van Gogh's technique of sweeping, expressive brushstrokes to indicate the artist's psychological and emotional state. Even the Neo-Expressionists of the 1980s, like Julian Schnabel and Eric Fischl , owe a debt to Van Gogh's expressive palette and brushwork. In popular culture, his life has inspired music and numerous films, including Vincente Minelli's Lust for Life (1956), which explores Van Gogh and Gauguin's volatile relationship. In his lifetime, Van Gogh created 900 paintings and made 1,100 drawings and sketches, but only sold one painting during his career. With no children of his own, most of Van Gogh's works were left to brother Theo.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Vincent van Gogh

• Vincent Van Gogh: A Biography By Julius Meier-Graefe
• Stranger On The Earth: A Psychological Biography Of Vincent Van Gogh By Albert J. Lubin
• Vincent Van Gogh: Portrait of an Artist By Jan Greenberg, Sandra Jordan
• Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh By Irving Stone, Jean Stone
• Letters of Vincent Van Gogh Our Pick By Vincent Van Gogh, Mark Roskill
• Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings Our Pick By Ingo F. Walther, Rainer Metzger
• Van Gogh in Provence and Auvers By Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov
• Vincent's Colors By Vincent Van Gogh, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings By Colta Ives, Susan Alyson Stein, Sjraar Van Heugten, Marije Vellekoop
• The Vincent Van Gogh Museum
• The Vincent Van Gogh Gallery Comprehensive image gallery of the artist's works
• Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters Our Pick Archives of Van Gogh's complete letters
• Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night Interactive website for the 2008 MoMA Exhibition
• Van Gogh's Ear and Modern Painting Our Pick By Adam Gopnik / The New Yorker / January 4, 2010
• Van Gogh's Night Visions By Paul Trachtman / Smithsonian Magazine / January 2009
• Nocturnal Van Gogh, Illuminating the Darkness Our Pick By Roberta Smith / The New York Times / September 18, 2008
• The Evolution of a Master Who Dreamed on Paper By Michael Kimmelman / The New York Times / October 14, 2005
• Where Van Gogh's Art Reached its Zenith By Grace Glueck / The New York Times / October 7, 1984
• Lust for Life Our Pick Book by Irving Stone
• Vincent & Theo Robert Altman's film about the brothers Van Gogh
• Don McLean's song 'Vincent (Starry Starry Night)'

Similar Art

Boulevard des Capucines (1873)

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte (1884-86)

Related artists.

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Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

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Vincent van Gogh summary

Vincent van Gogh , (born March 30, 1853, Zundert, Neth.—died July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, France), Dutch painter. At 16 he was apprenticed to art dealers in The Hague, and he worked in their London and Paris branches (1873–76). After brief attempts at missionary work and theology, he studied drawing at the Brussels Academy; late in 1881 he settled at The Hague to work with a Dutch landscape painter, Anton Mauve. During his early years he painted three types of subjects—still life, landscape, and figure—all interrelated by their reference to the daily life of peasants (e.g., The Potato Eaters , 1885). After briefly studying at the Antwerp Academy, in 1886 he left to join his brother Theo, an art dealer, in Paris. There he met Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Paul Gauguin , and others involved in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism . By the summer of 1887 he was painting in pure colours and using broken brushwork that was at times pointillistic, and by the beginning of 1888 his Post-Impressionist style had crystallized. He left Paris in February 1888 for Arles, in southeastern France. The pictures he created over the following 12 months—depicting blossoming fruit trees, views of the town and surroundings, self-portraits, portraits of Roulin the postman and other friends, interiors and exteriors of the house, sunflowers, and landscapes—marked his first great period. Gauguin arrived in October 1888, and for two months he and van Gogh worked together; but, while each influenced the other to some extent, their relations rapidly deteriorated. On Christmas Eve 1888, physically and emotionally exhausted, van Gogh snapped under the strain; after arguing with Gauguin, he cut off the lower half of his own left ear. At the end of April 1889, van Gogh entered an asylum but continued to paint; during his 12-month stay he completed 150 paintings and drawings. A move to Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890 was followed by another burst of activity, but he soon suffered a relapse and died that July of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His 10-year artistic career produced more than 800 paintings and 700 drawings, of which he sold only one in his lifetime. His work had a powerful influence on the development of modern painting, and he is considered the greatest Dutch painter since Rembrandt .

Short Biography of Van Gogh

Short biography of van gogh, vincent van gogh: a journey through life and art, comprehension.

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is world famous. Learn about his life, read his letters, or explore his paintings and drawings.

Self-Portraits

Vincent made many self-portraits to practise his skills as a painter.

Van Gogh loved nature and enjoyed to paint outside.

Flowers and Blossom

Van Gogh painted a number of impressive flower still lifes, such as Sunflowers and Irises .

Early Drawings

As a beginning artist, Vincent drew a lot to practise his skills.

Drawings from Paris

Vincent gained many new impressions in Paris. He drew cafes and boulevards and the landscape along the Seine.

Drawings from the South of France

In the South of France, Van Gogh made many works on paper that show his skills as draughtsman.

The Best Letters and Quotes

Delve into Van Gogh’s finest letters and discover popular quotes.

Academic Website

Visit the website vangoghletters.org to access all of Van Gogh’s known letters, complete with detailed annotations.

Prefer a book? Discover the letter compilations and anthologies in our webstore.

First Steps as an Artist

Vincent's parents aren't happy with his choice for an artist's life. Fortunately, that doesn't stop Vincent from working hard.

From Dark to Light

In Paris, Vincent developed his own, well-known style with bright colors.

Vincents Final Months

After a visit to Theo, Vincents has growing worries about money.

Vincent's Illness

The ear incident was the result of Vincent’s first major mental breakdown.

5 things you need to know about

5x Van Gogh's Sunflowers

Did you know there are five different versions of the famous painting? Find out more.

The Brothers Vincent and Theo

Vincent’s life had plenty of ups & downs, but he could always count on the support of his younger brother Theo,

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Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Zundert, the Netherlands. He trained to be an art dealer. Later he turned to religious studies and did missionary work in Belgium.

Van Gogh did not begin his career as an artist until 1880. In the following 10 years he produced more than 800 oil paintings and 700 drawings. He moved around frequently, painting and studying art in the Netherlands and Belgium. During a stay in Paris, France, he met many modern artists and his style became less traditional. In 1888 he moved to Arles in southeastern France, where he did some of his best work.

A famous event took place in Arles in 1888. After a quarrel with artist Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh cut off the lower half of his own left ear. Van Gogh spent much of the rest of his life in and out of mental hospitals. He shot himself on July 27, 1890, and died two days later near Paris.

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Who are they?

Who is Vincent van Gogh?

You might know the name Van Gogh, but do you know who he really was?

Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers 1888 National Gallery, London

The man who painted Sunflowers

Vincent van Gogh is one of the world’s most famous painters. When you start school, one of the first artworks that you will ever look at is probably Van Gogh’s Sunflowers . This painting is very famous. Look at its bright yellows and the way each of the fourteen sunflowers are painted differently. Van Gogh painted Sunflowers for the room in the yellow house he was renting in Arles, France. His friend, the painter Paul Gauguin, was coming to visit and Van Gogh wanted to redecorate.

Why is he so famous?

Vincent van Gogh Starry Night over the Rhone 1889 Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Today, most people know the name Vincent van Gogh. However, when he was alive, he was not very famous at all. Since his death, he has become one of the most successful painters in history. People across the world have admired his unique style. If you look closely at his paintings, the brushstrokes are broken up. It is as if you can see each time Van Gogh put his brush on the canvas. Do you like this style?

In total, Van Gogh made around 2,100 artworks. So, if you only know Sunflowers , there are many more paintings by him to discover.

What inspired him?

Vincent van Gogh The Bedroom 1889 Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands, but travelled across Europe. He went to France, Belgium and England. When he was in London, he was inspired by all the art he saw in galleries. Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, worked in an art gallery and introduced Van Gogh to many artworks. Van Gogh was interested in painters who were painting everyday life.

When he was 27, he decided to become an artist. Up until then, he had been a teacher, a shop assistant and had dreams of working for the Church. All of these experiences inspired his art.

Why did he die so young?

Vincent van Gogh Self Portrait, Autumn 1889 National Gallery of Art (Washington, USA)

It is a really sad story. Van Gogh struggled with mental health problems. This meant that he sometimes felt very angry or sad and was not able to control his emotions. Sometimes, he would harm himself and have blackouts. Van Gogh used painting as a way to express his emotions and way to help with his illness.

Van Gogh’s did not get the help he needed and there was not the same understanding of mental health as there is today. Van Gogh felt alone and was not able to handle the pressure of his emotions. He died by suicide. He was only 37. It is sad to think of all the wonderful artworks he could have painted had he gotten better.

What did he paint?

Vincent van Gogh Farms near Auvers (1890) Tate

Van Gogh liked to paint the places he visited. When you look at his paintings, you can almost imagine you are there with him. In Farms near Auvers , the bright greens make you feel like you are standing in the French countryside. This painting was made towards the end of Van Gogh’s career. Earlier, he had used darker colours. As he grew older, he liked using lighter colours.

Van Gogh also liked painting portraits. He said that portraits were

'the only thing in painting that moves me deeply’

Van Gogh painted portraits of many different people he met, but he really liked painting portraits of himself. He made over 30 self-portraits. You can also try and paint your own self-portrait. Try looking at yourself in the mirror or in a photograph to get you inspired.

Vincent van Gogh The Oise at Auvers (1890) Tate

More to Explore

Create Art Like Van Gogh

Quiz: Which Artist Should Design Your Bedroom?

Quiz: Van Gogh Beat the Clock Challenge

Vincent van Gogh

• Style and Technique
• Critical Reception
• Bedroom in Arles
• Café Terrace at Night
• Portrait d'Eugene Boch
• Self-portrait with Straw Hat

Starry Night

• Starry Night Over the Rhone
• The Flowering Orchard

The Potato Eaters

Vincent Van Gogh Biography

• Vincent Willem van Gogh
• Short Name:
• Date of Birth:
• 30 Mar 1853
• Date of Death:
• 29 Jul 1890
• Figure, Landscapes, Cityscapes, Scenery
• Art Movement:
• Post-Impressionism
• Zundert, Netherlands
• Vincent Van Gogh Biography Page's Content

Introduction

• Early Years
• Middle Years
• Advanced Years

A key figure in the world of Post-impressionism Vincent Van Gogh also helped lay the foundations of modern art. A troubled man, he experienced many uncertainties and rejections in his early life, particularly where female love interests were concerned. Religion played a huge role in van Gogh´s life and many of his paintings carry religious undertones. Van Gogh did not experience great success during his lifetime, selling just one painting but after his death his work was revealed to the world and he is now regarded as one of the greatest artists that ever lived.

Vincent van Gogh Early Years

Becoming increasingly frustrated, Vincent ended his relationship with Hoomik and feeling uninspired, he moved back in with his parents to continue practicing his art. It was then that he was introduced to the paintings of Jean-Franqois Millet and he imitated Millets style a lot in his early works. Van Gogh had the desire to paint figures and in 1885 he completed The Potato Eaters which proved a success at the time. Believing he needed focused training in art techniques, van Gogh enrolled at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and was impressed by the works of Rubens and various Japanese artists, and such influences would impact greatly on van Gogh's individual style. In 1886 Vincent van Gogh relocated to Paris and immersed himself in the world of Impressionism and Post-impressionism. He adopted brighter, more vibrant colors and began experimenting with his technique. He also spent time researching the styles found in the Japanese artwork he had discovered a year earlier. Paris exposed van Gogh to artists such as Gauguin, Pissarro, Monet, and Bernard. He befriended Paul Gauguin and moved to Arles in 1888 and Gauguin joined him later. Van Gogh started to paint sunflowers to decorate Gauguin's bedroom and this work of art would later become one of his most accomplished pieces, Sunflowers.

Vincent van Gogh Advanced Years

It was towards the end of 1888 that van Gogh's mental illness began to worsen and in one outburst he pursued Gauguin with a knife and threatened him. Later that day at home, Vincent cut off part of his own ear then offered it to a prostitute as a gift, and he was temporarily hospitalized. Upon returning home he found Gauguin leaving Arles, and thus his dream of setting up an art school was crushed. Van Gogh committed himself to an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence at the end of 1888 and his paintings from his time there were brimming with activity. It was in the asylum that he painted Starry Night which became his most popular work and is one of the most influential pieces in history. Van Gogh left Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1890 and continued painting, producing a number of works - nearly one painting per day. Despite his creative achievements, the artist thought of his life as terribly wasted, and a personal failure. On July 27, 1890 he attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest and died two days later from the wound, aged 37. Van Goghs dear brother Theo was devastated by his loss and died six months later. Theos widow took Vincent van Goghs works to Holland and published them, and he was an instant success. His work went on to influence Modernist art and today, Vincent van Gogh is regarded as one of history's greatest painters.

Biography of Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Groot Zundert, North Brabant, Netherlands. From childhood, he showed signs of a moody and agitated temperament that would torment his projects throughout his entire life. Son of a Protestant pastor, he first chose to orient his life towards Protestantism, becoming a preacher in London, a student of theology and an evangelizer among the mining populations of Borinage. Becoming sympathetic to the miners’ struggle, Van Gogh practiced painting, leaving us the first traces of a somber style; one certainly marked by the misery of the miners, but one to which he also attached a sense of urgency and intensity.

In 1886, he moved to Paris and lived with his brother Theo, who ran a small gallery of paintings. He quickly became acquainted with the young painters of the era, who were at the forefront of the most innovative artistic movements. Influenced by the work of the impressionists, as well as Japanese artists, Van Gogh’s style began to evolve. His colours brightened and his brushstrokes refined according to the shapes of the objects he represented. Beginning in 1888, he adopted the frank and bright hues present in the paintings of his French contemporaries before leaving Paris for the South of France.

Under the sun of Provence, he painted landscapes and scenes of southern life. The artist, then based in Arles, began using curved and swirling brushstrokes, as well as pure colours, particularly yellow, green and blue. This technique, very specific to Van Gogh’s work, appears in his famous paintings Bedroom in Arles (1888) and The Starry Night (1889). Any visible creation by Van Gogh from this period, whether painted or drawn, is seemingly bestowed with a physical and spiritual vitality. In this spirit of enthusiasm, he persuaded Paul Gauguin, an artist whom he had met in Paris, to come stay with him.

After less than two months of working together, their relationship deteriorated rapidly, culminating in the famous dispute in which Van Gogh threatened Gaugin with a razor blade. That same night, Van Gogh completely severed his own ear. A few months later, he voluntarily entered the asylum of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he painted fiercely. A great number of his masterpieces were created during this period.

In May 1890, the artist left the south and returned to his brother Theo in Paris. He took up residence close by in Auvers-sur-Oise, near the house of Dr. Gachet, an admirer and patron of several impressionist painters, as well as the subject of one of his portraits. The artist worked arduously in Auvers before passing away on July 29, 1890, leaving behind an artistic legacy that is today recognized around the globe.

Imagine Van Gogh highlights the works of Vincent Van Gogh from his Arles period (1888-1889) to the end of his life in 1890. These were exceptional years for the master, showcasing his talent, as well as his torments, in iconic works such as Sunflowers, Irises, Wheatfield with Crows , The Starry Night , in addition to his Japanese influences with the magnificent Almond Blossoms or his later The Church at Auvers . It also incorporates the many portraits painted during this period, including his Self-Portraits, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, La Mousmé, Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin and L’Arlésienne: Madame Ginoux . Altogether, an incredible number of Van Gogh’s masterpieces will be revealed to visitors from a completely new perspective.

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81 Museum Exhibitions and Biennials to See This Fall

By Alex Greenberger

Alex Greenberger

Senior Editor, ARTnews

In a word, this fall’s offerings are electric. The word shows up in the titles of not one but two tech-minded shows—one devoted to Op art and its influence, the other to the rise of digital art, at the Buffalo AKG Art Gallery and Tate Modern, respectively. It may as well also have figured in the name of a survey of women artists who involved computers in their art at MUDAM in Luxembourg, or to an exhibition about digital effects technologies at LACMA.

But the word “electric” might also be used to characterize a number of more analog offerings as well. The Centre Pompidou’s long-awaited Surrealism blowout is finally nearly upon us, as are retrospectives for well-established figures such as Lygia Clark, Thomas Schütte, Amy Sherald, Elizabeth Catlett, Sophie Calle, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, and more.

Art history nerds will find much to geek out about: the Metropolitan Museum of Art is mounting a blockbuster about pre-Renaissance Sienese art, the Qatar Museums are putting 19th-century French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme under the microscope, and the Getty Foundation’s science-minded edition of PST ART will reintroduce many deep cuts in more than 60 shows at venues across Southern California. Other shows will add new chapters to the discipline’s annals: there are expansive surveys of Indian and Pakistani art on the horizon, as well as shows about 1970s documentary photography and lens-based art in the UK during the 1980s.

Perhaps you crave something more spectacular? For that, look no further than a long-awaited survey devoted at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art for Anicka Yi, whose past works have involved AI and cutting-edge technology. You could probably apply the word “electric” to that show, too, in more sense than one. Below, a look at 81 museum shows and biennials to see this fall.

“Connecting Bodies: Asian Women Artists” at National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul

In recent years, Seoul’s top modern art museum, known as the MMCA for short, has made a concerted effort to acquire more works by Asian women artists. The results of that project form the basis of this show, a wide-ranging survey that stakes a claim for the importance of these artists, many of whom are still awaiting greater recognition outside Asia. Among those artists is Hong Lee Hyun-sook, a giant of feminist art in South Korea, where she is known for artworks that emphasize collaboration and solidarity with animals as a means of liberation.

September 3, 2024–March 3, 2025

“Surrealism” at Centre Pompidou, Paris

A year of celebrations for Surrealism , the avant-garde movement launched a century ago, reaches its apex with this blockbuster, which aspires to be just as perplexing as much of the art associated with the movement. In lieu of the traditional exhibition format, this one will be shaped like a maze, with André Breton’s 1924 Surrealist manifesto at its core. Surrounding it will be 14 sections that chart how Surrealists of all kinds interpreted literary texts and symbols. Agreed-upon masterpieces abound—Salvador Dalí’s The Great Masturbator (1929) and René Magritte’s Personal Values (1952) have made their way from Madrid and San Francisco, respectively, for the show. Yet the exhibition, in keeping with other recent surveys that have globalized Surrealism, also seeks to lure in some lesser-known figures, from the British nonpareil Ithell Colquhoun to the Japanese draughtsman Tatsuo Ikeda.

September 4, 2024–January 13, 2025

“Anicka Yi: There Exists Another Evolution, But This One” at Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul

Anicka Yi has awed audiences worldwide with high-tech works that consider the increasingly thin divide between humans and nonhumans, with dried flowers, AI, bacteria, scents culled from mega-galleries and New York’s Koreatown, and more among the materials for her innovative sculptures. Part of what makes her work so fascinating is its enigmatic quality, and that may be why the artist hasn’t said much about the new works she will unveil in this show, leaving us only with a Buddhist koan for a title. The show, whose 30 works act as a survey of Yi’s oeuvre, is significant in that it will Asia’s big introduction to her art, since the region has never before seen a museum show by this Korean American artist.

September 5, 2024–December 29, 2024

Aleksandra Domanović at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna

In the late 2000s, just before post-internet art took off, Aleksandra Domanović began to make available PDFs that, when printed using specific settings, resulted in stacks with imagery on their sides. These images were sometimes unsettling: some produced pictures related to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Her unusual blend of sleek digital art and rough post-Soviet political matter made her a key artist of the era, and in the decade and a half since, she has continued producing off-kilter, thought-provoking art, from cyborgian sculptures to prints of stills from sci-fi movies. Domanović’s first survey includes new works such as If These Walls Could Talk (2024), a piece that will combine images of Ian Donald, the physicist credited with developing ultrasounds for obstetric usage, and Slovak folk patterns.

September 5, 2024–January 26, 2025

“Scott Burton: Shape Shift” at Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis

Scott Burton once said his artworks could be considered “sculpture in love with furniture,” a reference to the way that pieces imploded the boundary between art and design. Many of his sculptures could be sat upon, though they hardly functioned like chairs; other works by him looked like tables, though not of the sort you’d want in your home. Burton’s art doubled as a sly subversion of Minimalist aesthetics and an off-kilter inquiry into how a sculpture might invite forms of engagement beyond looking. Here, for the first time since his death of AIDS-related complications in 1989, this underrated artist will receive a proper survey, this one with a specific focus on his queer identity.

September 6, 2024–February 2, 2025

Carl Cheng at the Contemporary Austin, Texas

In 1967, Carl Cheng began to take the name John Doe Co., a moniker that referred to a faux company that produced unusable emergency kits, TVs with rocks in them, and more. These objects—which were, in fact, sculptures, not products made available for sale—mocked how corporations molded the natural world to their purposes and made it available for purchase. As more and more artists turn their attention toward climate change, it is no surprise that Cheng’s work has become the source of newfound interest. At long last, this octogenarian Californian will receive his first retrospective, which opens first in Texas before traveling to Philadelphia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Los Angeles.

September 6, 2024–December 8, 2024

“Mark Bradford: Keep Walking” at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

For his 2022 piece 500 , Mark Bradford created 60 painted versions of a 1913 ad imploring Black families to move to a colony in New Mexico called Blackdom. Bradford painted the ad in uneven shades of black and orange, a color palette that made the posting appear as though it were smoldering—an effect meant to mirror the destruction that has repeatedly threatened Black communities across the nation. Similar works dealing with Black history will appear in Bradford’s latest show, the first staged by the Hamburger Bahnhof in the newly reopened Rieckenhallen, an expansive exhibition space that was nearly lost to a real estate developer several years ago.

September 6, 2024–May 18, 2025

Gwangju Biennale

The curatorial ambitions of Nicolas Bourriaud, the figure behind the term “relational aesthetics,” have rarely failed him, and that alone makes his edition of Asia’s top biennial worth attending. His focus, as usual, is broad: multiverses, climate change, and sound will all play a role in his biennial, which is titled “Pansori, a soundscape of the 21st century,” its name a reference to the Korean word for “the noise from the public place.” Providing that noise are dozens of artists from across the globe, including Gaëlle Choisne, Dora Budor, Frida Orupabo, Yein Lee, Philippe Parreno, and more.

September 7, 2024–December 1, 2024

Noah Davis at Das Minsk, Potsdam, Germany

In one of Noah Davis’s dreamy paintings, Black ballet dancers in tutus perform outdoors, seemingly unaware that they are sited among sidewalks and grass, not in a studio. There is no audience to watch them, and there are no people at all around them. The piece exemplifies Davis’s tendency to transplant Black figures into settings that have no clear meaning, causing them to appear intentionally illegible, lost in their own worlds. Works like this one are immersive—no small feat for an artist who died at 32—and some 50 of them will be include in what is being billed as a retrospective for an artist gone too soon.

September 7, 2024–January 5, 2025

“Christopher Kulendran Thomas: Safe Zone” at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels

Even before AI became the stuff of general conversation, Christopher Kulendran Thomas had been using it to create videos and paintings that braid together a wide array of topics: pop stars, viral sensations, the history of Tamil Eelam, the story of abstraction, and more. His WIELS show will continue his usage of AI, here in the form of new paintings. There will also be a never-before-shown 24-screen video installation, Peace Core (2024), which appropriates a news report aired in the US and re-edits it using the style of the TikTok trend corecore, in which unlike video clips are massed together and set to a melodramatic soundtrack.

“Emily Karaka: Ka Awatea, A New Dawn” at Sharjah Art Foundation, United Arab Emirates

Emily Karaka’s raucously colored paintings bridge the gap between Abstract Expressionism and traditional Māori craft, infusing modernist styles with political import. Aptly, these works, which depict verdant forests and scrawled heads, have been termed “political landscapes” by the Māori artist, a reference to how the land imagined in the paintings should be viewed as imbued with Indigenous history—and subject to exploitation by white colonialists. A leading figure of the Aotearoa’s art scene, Karaka will here receive her first survey.

This roving biennial has historically taken place in one city or region imperiled in a debate over its very existence. This year’s locale is no different: Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, where pro-independence parties recently lost their majority in the autonomous community’s Parliament. Against that backdrop, organizer Filipa Oliveira—formally titled the biennial’s Artistic Creative Mediator—has sprinkled works by 85 artists across 12 cities in the Barcelona metropolitan area. Emilija Škarnulytė, Judy Chicago, Larry Achiampong, Claudia Pagès, and Binta Diaw are among those lined up to participate.

September 8, 2024–November 24, 2024

“Saodat Ismailova: A Seed Under Our Tongue” at Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan

Saodat Ismailova’s slow, meditative film installations tend to feature long takes of landscapes complemented often by shots of women cloistered in domestic settings. These works are intended to communicate the histories of Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan, Ismailova’s homeland. While her art may seem culturally specific, it has had broad appeal, memorably appearing in both Documenta and the Venice Biennale in 2022 alone. Her fast ascent in the international art world continues with this survey, which includes a re-edited version of a film about a forest in Kyrgyzstan and a resin cast of a cave.

September 12, 2024–January 12, 2025

“Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist and All That It Implies” at Brooklyn Museum, New York

In her 1968 sculpture Black Unity , Elizabeth Catlett portrays a clenched fist, its knuckles and fingers hewn from a block of softly sanded cedar. The sculpture, with its revolutionary content and its minimalist aesthetic, typifies Catlett’s legendary oeuvre, with married Black leftist politics and modernist styles. Some 150 of her works—many depicting people in Mexico, the country where she resided for much of her career—will be assembled for this hotly anticipated retrospective, which starts in New York before traveling to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (its co-organizer) and the Art Institute of Chicago.

September 13, 2024–January 19, 2025

“Erwin Wurm: A 70th-Birthday Retrospective” at Albertina, Vienna

With Erwin Wurm now moving into his seventh decade, the Albertina is giving him a full-dress retrospective. There will, of course, be the works for which this giant of the Austrian scene is best known, his “One Minute Sculptures,” which call on laypeople to enact brief performances with quotidian objects. These works, like many others by Wurm, question whether art can serve any purpose within the world—and, if the answer is no, whether that matters much at all. Consider that a winking critique of modernism’s obsession with functionalism, or think of it as joke on the pieces’ participants, who often must go through some physical labor to perform nonsense gestures.

September 13, 2024–March 9, 2025

“Neïl Beloufa: Humanities” at Renaissance Society, Chicago, and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland

This multi-continental double-header of shows will feature two new bodies of work by an artist whose known for shrewdly taking up the ills of colonialism and capitalism, sometimes with a sci-fi edge. In Chicago, Beloufa will show what the institution describes as a “custom, interactive multimedia system” that will enable each visitor to chart their own rise in the business world. In Basel, there will be works dealing with the concept of financial tombstones, which are issued by companies to publicly advertise transactions.

Renaissance Society: September 14, 2024–November 10, 2024 Kunsthalle Basel: October 4, 2024–January 19, 2025

“Knowing the West” at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas

As new attention is paid to violence and racism weathered by Native communities, the American West has come under the microscope, viewed not as a land of possibility but as an area exemplifying the horrors of white-led colonialism. Accordingly, this show about it does not center cowboys and vast vistas but Indigenous art of roughly the past two centuries. Though not exclusively a survey of art by Native Americans, the exhibition puts the focus on figures such as Nellie Two Bear Gates (Gathering of Clouds Woman), whose beaded suitcases produced in the late 19th century testified to interactions between Native people and white cowboys.

September 14, 2024–January 27, 2025

“Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers” at National Gallery, London

There are exactly seven versions of Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1889), and one of them is a destination point at the National Gallery, which owns it. Now, for a brief period, the institution will be home to a second one, on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art for this exhibition. With just 60 works, this show may be on the smaller end for high-profile van Gogh surveys, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in prestige: its checklist includes well-known still lifes and nightscapes that have made their way from across Europe.

September 14, 2024–January 19, 2025

“Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice” at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

One of the premier exhibitions of this year’s science-focused, Getty Foundation–funded initiative, PST ART (formerly Pacific Standard Time), this show surveys how 25 artists have used their art to highlight our vulnerable ecology. While its artist list is bedecked with stars (photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier and painter Yoshitomo Nara among them), the focus here is on the unclassifiable and the bizarre. Witness the case of Garnett Puett, a beekeeper by training, who enlists these insects as collaborators for his works known as “apisculptures.” Visitors will be able to interact with those sculptures, along with a garden by Ron Finley and an installation made of debris by Yangkura.

September 14, 2024–January 5, 2025

“Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue” at Museum of Modern Art, New York

Robert Frank’s 1958 photobook The Americans remains a classic because it crystallized a rot in postwar America’s collective consciousness. The book’s pictures, many showing disillusioned people across the country, are the ones most commonly associated with Frank. But he kept working for 60 years after that tome, producing a range of films and photographs that continued to develop the book’s themes. With 200 works on hand, this show seeks to expand the general public’s conception of Frank, focusing specifically on those in his artistic network—among others, his wife, the artist June Leaf, who died earlier this year; his film editor, Laura Israel; and his frequent collaborator, Danny Seymour.

September 15, 2024–January 11, 2025

Ming Smith at Various Venues, Columbus, Ohio

Though photographer Ming Smith may typically be associated with New York, a quartet of shows this season—two at the Columbus Museum of Art, as well as one a piece at Wexner Center of the Arts and the Gund—seek to reclaim her as an Ohioan, given that she was raised in Columbus. But geography can hardly contain Smith, who took significant strides for Black female artists like herself, and many of the pictures in these shows were taken far beyond Ohio. The Wexner, for example, is spotlighting some of Smith’s photographs shot in Africa, where she imaged sights seen and people encountered in an unusually high level of darkness that typifies her art.

Columbus Museum: September 19, 2024–January 26, 2025 Wexner: September 22, 2024–January 5, 2025 Gund: Through December 15, 2024

“For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability” at Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California

Among the most exciting offerings of this year’s PST ART is this survey of how artists contended with illness and disability, from the 1960s through the Covid pandemic. The 80 artists included take many different approaches to the subject: a Joey Terrill painting featured here offers a visually stunning meditation on living with HIV, while Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose’s rarely seen Video Coffin (1994), an installation featuring footage of the former inside a casket, sounds a more somber note.

September 19, 2024–February 2, 2024

“Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991” at Mudam, Luxembourg

“The clitoris is a direct line to the matrix,” wrote the art collective VNS Matrix in its famed 1991 manifesto, a text that has been credited with introducing the term “cyberfeminism” to the contemporary lexicon. But even before that, women artists of all stripes—painters, sculptors, filmmakers, and more—had asserted a female claim to computing technology, which some of them believed could induce a new kind of gender parity. This enterprising exhibition surveys that bunch, with the offerings ranging from Ulla Wiggen’s paintings of computer circuitry to Tamiko Thiel’s pioneering digital artworks.

September 20, 2024–February 2, 2025

Toronto Biennial of Art

Canada is a microcosm of the world writ large in the third edition of this biennial, which considers how the nation’s dark history of colonialism mirrors that of other countries across the globe. Perhaps that sounds dour; curators Dominique Fontaine and Miguel A. López have suggested otherwise. They’ve said their biennial features art that will “conjure sparks that light a fire amidst the fragility of existence.” Works by Ahmed Umar, Cecilia Vicuña, Hangama Amiri, Morehshin Allahyari, Raven Chacon, Sonia Boyce, and others will attest to that premise.

September 21, 2024–December 1, 2024

Michael Craig-Martin at Royal Academy of Arts, London

Can a glass of water really be an oak tree? Perhaps, if an artist says so. That, at least, was the suggestion made by a 1973 conceptual art piece by Michael Craig-Martin, whose provocations went on to inspire future shockers by artists such as Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, and Sarah Lucas, all of whom were his students. As his influence continues to be highlighted in British institutions, the Irish artist is getting a proper retrospective that will include his famed conceptual artworks alongside recent paintings that mash together elements borrowed from art historical masterpieces, rendered here in neon green, pink, and red.

September 21, 2024–December 10, 2024

“Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion” at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio

Despite his fanbase counting legions of photography historians and Black and queer artists, Rotimi Fani-Kayode has remarkably never received a proper US survey. That will change this season with this show, a 200-work presentation that explores how this Nigerian-born photographer navigated his status as a gay man living in England at a remove from his homeland. His lush portraits, many paying homage to Yoruba lore, often obscure parts of his sitters’ bared bodies or allow their forms to multiply. Fani-Kayode’s point was that the self is an unknowable, mysterious thing, only occasionally coming into focus for seconds at a time.

September 22, 2024–January 5, 2025

“Louise Bourgeois: I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful.” at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo

Louise Bourgeois’s is beloved for having transmuted her complex feelings about her father and mother into uncomfortable sculptures hinting at bodily containment. Like good therapists, the curators of this show spend their time here mapping out Bourgeois’s tortured family dynamics, suggesting her career as an arc from repression to liberation. The exhibition’s selection of 100 works—from early paintings to examples of the late-career spider sculptures—peels back some of the psychological mystique that surrounds Bourgeois, whose life story continues to provide plenty of intrigue more than a decade after her passing.

September 25, 2024–January 19, 2025

“Edges of Ailey” at Whitney Museum, New York

Might we be experiencing a renaissance of dance-oriented museum shows? Following surveys devoted to the Judson Dance Theater at MoMA and Simone Forti at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, there is now this expansive show about choreography Alvin Ailey, who launched an iconic dance company in his name that is still active today. The sprawling exhibition has been afforded all 18,000 square feet of the Whitney’s fifth floor, and while there will be paintings and sculptures on offer there, by the likes of Faith Ringgold, Kevin Beasley, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and many more, the main attraction will be performances staged two floors beneath. In that space, choreographers and artists ranging from Bill T. Jones to Okwui Okpokwasili will create works that pay homage to Ailey, whose dances memorably merged the centuries-old traditions of ballet with modern dance and contemporary Black culture.

September 25, 2024–February 9, 2025

“Soledad Sevilla: Rhythms, Grids, Variables” at Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid

The last time Soledad Sevilla showed at the Reina Sofía, in 2012, she covered the glass walls of its Palacio de Cristal with polycarbonate panels, altering this famed space by causing it to appear blue. More than a decade on, this Spanish painter has returned, this time for a survey of her work more broadly, which has subjected abstraction to rigorous geometries. During the ’60s, while many of her colleagues were experimenting with irregular pours and dribbles of paint, Sevilla was using computers to produce her art; she later moved in an analog direction, though she continued to rely upon rule sets, resulting in what she has called “rational abstraction.” Alongside a selection of more than 100 of these works, Sevilla will debut a new installation made of cotton thread.

September 25, 2024–March 10, 2025

“Tao Hui: In the Land Beyond Living” at Tai Kwun Contemporary Art Centre, Hong Kong

This young Chinese artist has gained a reputation for making incisive video art about alienation and capitalism, often in ways more mystifying than outright dour. Recent works have drawn upon the fast-paced, meme-friendly styles seen on TikTok. His 2023 video Hardworking , for example, is displayed on an iPhone-shaped screen that slopes onto the floor and features a saleswoman who repeatedly tries to peddle products, all while digital effects surround her. That work, along with several new commissions, appears in this show, which is among this rising star’s most high-profile exhibitions to date in Asia.

September 26, 2024–February 2, 2025

“Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules” at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence

Helen Frankenthaler did not so much paint on canvas as she did in canvas, soaking and staining her colors to create faint blooms of pink and blue. That unusual technique caused her to stand out in the (largely male) field of Abstract Expressionists, and it has continued to place her at the forefront of the movement in the years since. Perhaps owing to her nationality, Americans have seen far more sizable Frankenthaler shows than Europeans. That makes this modestly scaled sampler of her art major among the few high-quality shows staged on the continent in recent years.

September 27, 2024–January 26, 2025

“Electric Op” at Buffalo AKG Art Gallery, New York

Op art, the 1960s movement known for its warping abstractions, is generally seen as an attempt to muck with viewers’ sense of perception, demanding onlookers to see paintings and sculptures with their minds as well as their eyes. But what if Op was also about making art become like new machinery? That’s the thesis of this survey, which suggests that Op’s foremost adherents—Carlos Cruz-Diez, Bridget Riley, and Victor Vasarely, among others—may have been thinking through the rise of video and a multitude of screens in their art. To make the point, the show also lures in post-Op art, from computer-oriented pieces by Vera Molnár and Zdenek Sýkora to digital art by Leo Villareal and Casey Reas.

September 27, 2024–January 27, 2025

“Paula Rego: Power Games” at Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland

Angel (1998), one of Paula Rego’s most famous works, features the artist’s muse Lila Nunes posing as a divine being brandishing a sword and a sponge. The piece concluded a series of pastels that Rego made to protest Portugal’s oppressive laws regarding abortion, with this angel present to “punish everyone” who’d contributed to that culture. Rego has justly earned international attention for works such as these, which enlist images borrowed from fairy tales and religious scenes, then reposition them to speak to imbalanced gender dynamics and violence committed by conservative regimes. The biggest Rego show since her death in 2022 will feature Angel as well as 120 other works that show how this gimlet-eyed artist pushed back against power structures.

September 28, 2024–February 2, 2025

Thomas Schütte at Museum of Modern Art, New York

A Pringle balanced on a matchbox, sculptures of grotesque men entangled with each other, a column with two cherries on top: Thomas Schütte has done it all and then some, working in no signature style along the way. That makes the MoMA retrospective for this celebrated German sculptor a prime opportunity to take stock of his diverse oeuvre. Despite having won the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion award and having received big shows of this sort abroad, his art has never been seen in such a large quantity on US soil. His MoMA show aims to fix that.

September 29, 2024–January 18, 2025

“Lygia Clark: The I and the You” at Whitechapel Gallery, London

Are we on the verge of a Lygia Clark–aissance in Europe? It certainly seems that way, given that there are two retrospectives due to open in the continent within the next year alone. The first alights at the Whitechapel Gallery, which has brought on a curatorial team that includes Golden Lion–winning artist Sonia Boyce to consider the Brazilian Neo-Concretist. During the 1950s, Clark devised a groundbreaking group of folding sculptures that encouraged viewer participation. Then, in the decade afterward, she brought her work into the public sphere, creating performances that broke art free from the elite institutions that had long held it. Rather than merely presenting those pieces via documentation, the Whitechapel Gallery will reanimate these performances regularly throughout the show, ensuring that Clark’s uncontainable energy remains present more than 30 year after her death.

October 2, 2024–January 12, 2025

“Paulo Nazareth: Luzia” at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City

In 1974, an 11,500-year-old skeleton was discovered in a Brazilian rock shelter. She was subsequently given the name Luzia, and she was discovered to have shared genetic material with Indigenous Australians. In 2020, seeking to exhume the full breadth of her lineage, Brazilian artist Paulo Nazareth began charting Luzia’s history using found objects, which he assembled as a means of charting those that came before her. Part scientific inquiry and part speculative conceptual art project, this grouping of works will be the primary focus of his first exhibition in Mexico, yet another attempt by Nazareth to show how borders rarely contain people from moving beyond them.

October 3, 2024–February 9, 2025

“Lauren Halsey: emajendat” at Serpentine Galleries, London

The distant past, the immediate present, and the near future merge in Lauren Halsey’s sprawling installations, which mix styles derived from ancient Egypt with appropriated images related to South Central, the Los Angeles neighborhood the artist calls home. In the past decade, these installations featuring carved columns, clipped pictures, found ephemera, and more have won her acclaim in the US; now, her international influence is expanding, with new sculptures featured prominently at the Venice Biennale. Her Serpentine commission, one of her grandest projects to date, will see her install a faux garden within the museum’s galleries, which are also set to feature objects Halsey gained from South Central residents.

October 4, 2024–March 2, 2025

“The ’70s Lens: Reimagining Documentary Photography” at National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Documentary photography is commonly thought to be a truth-telling form of picture-making, but the 1970s, a decade marked by widespread distrust of power, demanded that the genre evolve. This 100-work survey explores that shift. Traditional documentary photographs abound—Helen Levitt, Larry Fink, and Anthony Hernandez will feature here—but so too do more conceptual works that present lies to viewers. Take the case of Tseng Kwong Chi, whose photographs involved the artist wearing a Mao suit and venturing out into public, allowing people to decide for themselves how to engage with his concocted persona.

October 6, 2024–April 6, 2025

“Caillebotte: Painting Men” at Musée d’Orsay, Paris

In Gustave Caillebotte’s paintings, men are pictured doing a vast number of activities: walking dogs, scraping floors, rowing boats, gazing at boulevards on balconies, looking forlornly at trains. That he so often focused on men is not a coincidence, according to this show, which theorizes that the French Impressionist took an active role in recasting masculinity for the modern age. Though the show is notable for grouping dozens of his 19th-century canvases in one space, it is also significant for examining Caillebotte’s biography through the lens of gender, paying mind to the fact that he remained single at a time when this was unusual for a wealthy Parisian male.

October 8, 2024–January 19, 2025

“Arte Povera” at Bourse de Commerce, Paris

Of all the various avant-gardes that sprung up in postwar Europe, Arte Povera must rank among the strangest. Its purveyors, who worked in Italy in the 1960s, made oddball sculptural installations that combined organic elements—branches, horses, water—with industrial materials, suggesting that nature had been profoundly reshaped following World War II. Celebrity curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, newly retired from her post as director of the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, charts the movement anew here. She is set to focus specifically on 13 artists, among them Mario and Marisa Merz, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Pino Pascali, the subject of a recent retrospective at the Fondazione Prada in Milan.

October 9, 2024–January 20, 2025

Mire Lee at Tate Modern, London

This South Korean–born phenomenon makes large sculptures that are horrifying, disgusting, and visually resplendent all in one. Those squelchy works, which are often outfitted with mechanized elements, have channeled mystifying psychological states and envisioned indefinable bodies, and they have been a hit at biennials, from Venice to Busan. Her latest work, a commission for Tate Modern’s cavernous Turbine Hall, looks to continue her international rise.

October 9, 2024–March 16, 2025

“Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy” at Modern Art Museum, Shanghai

Will crystals heal us? Marina Abramović certainly thinks so. The performance artist has said that hematite, quartz, and tourmaline have “medical property, scientific property and energy property,” and she’s determined to show it in her biggest exhibition to date, which includes sculptures known as “Transitory Objects” that collectively feature 6,600 pounds of minerals. Viewers can interact with these objects and, hopefully, gain some spiritual fulfillment from them. Perhaps, too, they’ll come away with a new understanding of Abramović’s less warm performance art, for which the artist has subjected her body to painful situations.

October 10, 2024–February 28, 2025

“Charles Atlas: About Time” at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

This video art giant has never been one for traditional gestures—his 2018 video installation The Years , an assortment of past works about queer culture and dance arranged to look like gravestones in a cemetery, was conceived as a retrospective unto itself. Therefore, do not expect this 125-work show to be your average Charles Atlas survey. Conceived as an immersive grouping of installations, the show culminates in the debut of a new work featuring video portraits of artists such as Marina Abramović, John Waters, Lady Bunny, and Yvonne Rainer.

October 10, 2024–March 16, 2025

La Trienal at El Museo del Barrio, New York

This recurring survey of Latinx art is back for a second edition, after the first, focused specifically on the US and Puerto Rico, debuted in 2021. This time, though, the geographic purview has been expanded , so that now, artists from the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean will figure here. Alongside rising talents based in this country, from Ser Serpas to Alina Perez, there will be artists to watch from far abroad, such as Noberto Roldan, a Filipino known for his vast assemblages contending with forces of globalization.

October 10, 2024–February 9, 2025

“Nástio Mosquito: King of Klowns” at M HKA, Antwerp

“I don’t want to make this shit about irony. I don’t want to make shit about sarcasm,” Nástio Mosquito once said, referring to the fact that he was not so interested in postmodern strategies, since he didn’t have a formal art education. Perhaps fittingly, his work is characterized by an unusual directness. It is sex-positive, anti-colonial, and generally pretty uproarious, taking the form of performances, poetry, videos, and more with a comic edge. It’s a lot of art to wrangle, and in many different styles, too; the Angolan-born artist’s first major museum survey in Belgium, the country where he is now based, allows viewers to take stock of it all.

October 11, 2024–January 26, 2025

“Tacita Dean: Blind Folly” at Menil Collection, Houston

Tacita Dean may be best known for slowly paced 16mm films that contemplate landscapes and others’ artworks—decidedly analog gestures in our sped-up digital moment. But the focus in this show, the British artist’s most high-profile museum show in the US to date, will be on her drawings, prints, and sculptures, all of which further her films’ quest to visualize the passage of time. Alongside some of her moving-image works, there will also be her tree “portraits,” photographs of flowering plants, many printed at a monumental scale, that Dean augments her own drawn marks.

October 11, 2024–April 20, 2025

“Carol Rama: A Rebel of Modernity” at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

Artists who do not fit neatly into the art historical rubric of a given moment tend to slip through the cracks, and that may explain why Carol Rama was never canonized during her day. Her paintings of crowned women, people fornicating with animals, and fecal-looking splatters did an excellent job of breaking taboos, but they certainly did not conform to Arte Povera or any dominant movements in Italy, where she was based. They have, however, found an international audience following her death in 2015, and with this show, her first big survey in Germany, her following is poised to grown even more.

October 11, 2024–February 2, 2025

Tamara de Lempicka at de Young Museum

During the 1920s, Tamara de Lempicka was among the artists involved in the epic project of crafting the “New Woman,” a female persona that suited the fast-changing modern times. This Polish-born painter contributed canvases featuring modish women riding in cars and posing before urban metropolises, her subjects’ skin rendered using an off-kilter sheen that sometimes mirrored the machines pictured. Though some critics have labeled her art kitsch, Lempicka’s art has earned some avid admirers, among them the pop star Madonna, who has collected the artist’s work. Finally, more than four decades after her death, Lempicka is receiving a scholarly retrospective in the United States, where she worked for a majority of her career. Lempicka , a recent Broadway musical that played up the artist’s liberated sexuality and lifestyle, was a notorious flop; this much-anticipated show is likely not to suffer the same fate.

October 12, 2024–February 9, 2025

“Fluxus and Beyond: Ursula Burghardt, Benjamin Patterson” at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

The two artists surveyed here have largely been considered secondary figures in the history of Fluxus, the 1960s movement that claimed everyday objects as the stuff of art, and unjustly so. The exhibition suggests that their identities played a role. Ursula Burghardt, who made slight alterations to trinkets and offered them as her sculptures, was a Jewish German; Benjamin Patterson, whose unconventional music sometimes invited audience participation, was a Black American. While both were well-known to Fluxus-affiliated artists (Patterson was even vocally acclaimed by Nam June Paik), neither is quite so widely recognized today. This exhibition may change that.

Tarek Atoui at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria

Much of Tarek Atoui’s art is devoted to the production of surprising sounds. Those sounds emanate not from conventional instruments but from places and objects of Atoui’s own making. These unusual artworks have all asked a perplexing question: Which peoples, and what objects, deserve to be heard, and how? The subject of his latest work is being kept under wraps, but the Kunsthaus Bregenz has tantalizingly teased the project by noting that its spaces are acoustically sensitive, meaning that visitors should keep their ears peeled.

October 12, 2024–January 12, 2025

Olga de Amaral at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris

Textile artist Olga de Amaral weaves rich abstractions that translate the look of modernist painting into fiber, with her gorgeously hued threads even sometimes allowed to hang loose, creating sculptural installations that can be seen from multiple angles. Even in a time when fiber art has become pervasive in the institutions that once shunned it, this nonagenarian’s work stands out. The Colombian artist’s first retrospective in Europe will feature decades’ worth of art paying homage to pre-Columbian traditions and centuries-old handicrafts.

October 12, 2024–March 16, 2025

“Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350” at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Just about every Art History 101 course tends to place due emphasis on the explosion of creativity that occurred in Florence and birthed the Renaissance during the 15th century. But this blockbuster exhibition suggests that none of that would have been possible were it not for 14th-century Siena, where a group of painters set painting in a new direction by shearing Christian imagery of the staid styles associated with Medieval art. Duccio, for his part, began using egg tempera and gold leaf, and started painting figures that contained greater depth, like the humans that appeared in real life. His famed Madonna and Child (ca. 1290–1300), featuring the Christ Child playfully tugging at his mother’s veil, features here alongside works by Simone Martini, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and others in this jewel-box blockbuster, which heads to London’s National Gallery following its appearance in New York.

October 13, 2024–January 26, 2025

“Figures du Fou: Du Moyen Age aux Romantiques” at Louvre, Paris

Should Todd Phillips’s Joker: Folie à Deux (out October 4) leave you wanting more, there is this sprawling survey focused on the figure of the madman in artworks dating from between the 13th and 19th centuries. The expressions of insanity that figure here are not all so dour as Joker , however: some focus on love and passion, others on religious ecstasy, and still others on madness as a logical response to a culture obsessed with reason. Craziness takes many forms here, and so too do the artworks included, which include illuminated manuscripts, oil paintings, engravings, and more.

October 16, 2024–February 3, 2025

“Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann & …” at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

This mega-exhibition may sound like yet another retrospective for Tom Wesselmann, the Pop artist known for his paintings of sprawled-out nude women and domestic interiors stuffed with consumerist goods. Wesselmann fans, fear not: there are 150 pieces by the artist on hand here. But the show is more than Wesselmann, with another 70 works by 35 other artists whose work the curators have tied to his. Some of those pieces are critical of Wesselmann’s famed and famously polarizing “Great American Nude” paintings. Derrick Adams and Mickalene Thomas, for example, similarly portray odalisques, but theirs are focused on Black models. Seen in the context of Wesselmann’s paintings, the tenderness of Adams and Thomas’s gazes will become apparent.

October 16, 2024–February 24, 2025

“Malala Andrialavidrazana: Figures” at Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Since 2015, Malala Andrialavidrazana has been working on the series “Figures,” for which the Madagascar-born French artist mashes together pieces of maps, colonial paintings, currency, scientific diagrams, and more. The results are expansive, maximal photomontages that are intended to chart the world without a colonialist perspective. The sweeping ambition of these pieces may be one reason the Palais de Tokyo chose to award Andrialavidrazana its biggest space: a gallery whose 196-foot-long walls she will cover with preexisting “Figures” works that she will enlarge to a new, epic proportions.

October 17, 2024–January 5, 2025

“Silhouettes in the Undergrowth” at Museo Jumex, Mexico City

Starting in 1973, Ana Mendieta began to visit sites in Iowa and Mexico, and scrawl an abstracted female form into the landscape. Sometimes, she set this form on fire; in other instances, she left it to disappear as it was exposed to the elements. For her, the series, known as the “Siluetas,” became a way to imply an intimate connection between the land and the body, a project taken up in the intervening decades by a range of other Latin American women artists, five of whom appear alongside the late Mendieta in this show. Among them are Frieda Toranzo Jaeger, a young Mexican-born artist whose paintings have featured women arrayed in verdant nature, where they party and have sex alongside seemingly disused car parts.

“Medardo Rosso: Inventing Modern Sculpture” at mumok, Vienna

The title of this exhibition stakes a bold claim for Medardo Rosso, a sculptor who made a solid contribution to 19th-century art with his lumpy sculptures of expressive faces. Perhaps these works, made using a lost-wax casting technique more often associated with classical sculpture, are nowhere so transgressive as what followed them—they seem aesthetically conservative compared to the abstract sculptures European modernists produced thereafter. But the show places dozens of Rosso’s sculptures alongside more recent pieces by Jasper Johns, Phyllida Barlow, and Eva Hesse to prove that his work had lasting power, no matter how easy it may be to toss it off today.

October 18, 2024–February 23, 2025

Everlyn Nicodemus at National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh

Most self-portraits depict exactly one head—the artist’s—but Everlyn Nicodemus’s from 1982 contains five faces, all apparently belonging to the same body. Each of those faces looks a bit like Nicodemus. Her point with this work, the first by a Black woman to enter the collection of London’s National Portrait Gallery, was that the self is not always so easy to define, especially when one is diasporic like Nicodemus, a Tanzanian-born painter who has resided in Sweden, France, and Belgium. For the past 15 years, this influential artist has been tackling the aftermath of colonialism and the intricacies of Black identity from her studio in Edinburgh. At long last, she gets her first-ever retrospective; fittingly, it’s being held within the city she now calls home.

October 19, 2024–May 25, 2025

“Sophie Calle: Overshare” at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

The titular verb in this retrospective’s title is a reference to French artist Sophie Calle’s unique ability to leave nothing to the imagination. In her conceptual projects of the past few decades, she has regularly invaded people’s privacy—taking up a job as a hotel maid in order to rifle through people’s belongings in one famous project, and following a male stranger and documenting her travails for another. Her photographs, installations, and more will be assembled for her most comprehensive US museum show to date. It’s a homecoming of sorts for Calle, who, working on commission for a Minneapolis bank, once clandestinely photographed people withdrawing from an ATM for a project called Cash Machine (1991–2003).

October 26, 2024–January 26, 2025

“Steina: Playback” at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Steina’s name may hardly be a household one, but to video-art enthusiasts, she is an icon, having produced key tapes that explore the flow of time and the landscapes of Iceland and New Mexico, her birth country and her current home state, respectively. To properly encapsulate the octogenarian’s output is just about impossible, given the many forms it has taken. She cofounded the Kitchen, the New York art center that has fostered generations of media and performance artists, and she often worked collaboratively with her husband, the late Woody Vasulka. But this retrospective endeavors to try—and is likely to bring Steina wider recognition.

October 26, 2024–January 15, 2025

René Magritte at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Walk into any of the biggest modern art museums of Western Europe and the US, and you won’t have to go far to find a painting by René Magritte, the Belgian Surrealist known for depicting floating boulders, pipes that aren’t pipes, and canvases that shatter as though they were made of glass. Many of these famed works are located thousands of miles away from Australia, which is why this show, billed as his first retrospective ever on the continent, is being treated as such an event. One of the works making the trek for the occasion is the Museum of Modern Art’s The False Mirror (1929), in which the iris of an eye is replaced with a cloudy sky.

October 26, 2024–February 9, 2025

“Ei Arakawa-Nash: Paintings Are Popstars” at National Art Center, Tokyo

While Ei Arakawa-Nash is best known for performance art, much of his work has involved painting, a medium that has historically been largely about the final product, not the process of making it. The beauty of Arakawa-Nash’s art is that it shows that painting can be similar to performance art for those willing to view it that way: he has had people dance around paintings and even flung a person through a canvas. He is set to feature live performance art alongside painting once more with this show, which will include works by Oscar Murillo, Leidy Churchman, Trevor Shimizu, and more alongside events of Arakawa-Nash’s making. “This exhibition will definitely come only once in my life,” the artist said in a statement. “Please let me deliver it to you with a playful attitude.”

October 30, 2024–December 16, 2024

“Salvo: Arrivare in tempo” at Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin

Salvo’s colorful paintings of landscapes lined with bulbous trees and squat houses made him an outlier during his day, but this Italian artist has received a surge of interest in recent years, with his one of his canvases selling for over $1 million last year at Christie’s. Here comes the biggest exhibition ever afforded to him—in Turin, the city he called home, no less—to prove that he is more than just a market phenomenon. The show seeks to prove that even though Salvo may have had a light touch, he had big ideas on the brain, with a special interest in how a contemporary artist could reinvent historical genres for new eras.

October 31, 2024–May 24, 2025

“Meriem Bennani: For My Best Family” at Fondazione Prada, Milan

During the first lockdown, in 2020, Meriem Bennani and her collaborator Orian Barki charmed audiences worldwide with 2 Lizards , a grouping of videos posted to Instagram that featured computer-generated animals navigating a Covid-altered New York. Bennani and Barki are set to enchant once more with a new film, titled For Aicha , whose protagonist is a 35-year-old jackal named Bouchra who has acquired the ability to make movies. That work will be complemented by a fresh installation by Bennani composed of hundreds of flip flops; the shoes will be moved about by a machine, causing them to hit objects around them and produce a symphony of sound.

October 31, 2024–February 24, 2025

“MANZAR: Art and Architecture from Pakistan 1940s to Today” at National Museum of Qatar

With around 200 works included, this epic exhibition charts Pakistan’s art scene roughly from the time of Partition onward, attesting to a wealth of experimentation conducted along the way. Some artists, like Imran Qureshi and Shahzia Sikander, have remixed traditional styles like miniature painting and made them new—something made literal by Amin Gulgee, who will here recreate a Mughal garden with a contemporary twist. Others, like Lala Rukh and Salima Hashmi, have dealt with Pakistan’s present, taking up issues like women’s rights and nuclear disarmament. Across all these pieces, these artists attempt to envision the future of Pakistan, a nation that has experienced tumult since gaining independence in 1947.

November 1, 2024–January 31, 2025

Prospect New Orleans

All biennial-style exhibitions are saddled with the possibility of becoming parachute-in shows: curators and artists spend a brief period engaging with a specific locale, then depart once they’re done and never look back. Curator Miranda Lash and artist Ebony G. Patterson, the organizers of this year’s Prospect New Orleans triennial, have actively sought to avoid that quagmire with a show that they say asks: “What does it mean to ‘hold’ a city, a gesture that suggests care and reverence?” Works by Teresa Baker, Bethany Collins, Cathy Lu, Karyn Olivier, Stephanie Syjuco, Joiri Minaya, and more may offer some answers.

November 2, 2024–February 2, 2025

“Seeing Is Believing: the art and influence of Gérôme” at Mathaf, Qatar

Of all the 19th-century French painters credited with doing something new, Jean-Léon Gérôme may not have the greatest name recognition, even though his paintings have influenced the way many white Westerners conceive of North Africa and the Middle East. His canvases showing snake charmers, encampments in Egypt, and enslaved people seduced Europeans of his day with alluring, eroticized, and casually racist visions of lands largely unknown to them. In recent decades, this has all made these works ripe for critique, with Edward Said even famously plastering one such Gérôme painting across the cover of his 1978 book Orientalism . Gérôme was born 200 years ago, but he is not exactly getting a birthday celebration with this mega-exhibition, whose 400 works—some by him, some not—show how the artist crafted negative stereotypes that continue to pervade Western culture.

November 2, 2024–February 22, 2025

“Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930” at Guggenheim Museum, New York

Of all the – isms of the early 20th century known to the general public, Orphism is not likely to rank highly for name recognition. The Guggenheim aspires to change that with this big survey devoted to the movement, which upheld color as a primary means of experimentation, even as contemporaneous movements like Cubism opted largely for blacks, whites, and grays. The twinkling compositions that resulted—the whirling abstractions of František Kupka, the prismatic orbs painted by Sonia Delaunay—charm the eye with their bold palettes, which will provide plenty of excitement in this museum’s predominantly white interior.

November 8, 2024–March 9, 2025

Renata Lucas at Pinacoteca de São Paulo

In 2010, Renata Lucas tilted the sidewalk of a Berlin street exactly 7.5 degrees, forcing a circular swatch of the walkway to lead into a wall. The project typified this Brazilian artist’s practice, which has sought to create interruptions in the way people view and move through spaces. By turns humorous and slightly menacing, her interventions break down the reigning sense of order that guides daily life. For that reason, her biggest survey to date in her home country ought to provide a disorienting experience.

November 9, 2024–April 6, 2025

“The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970–2020” at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

The notion that painting is a fundamentally analog medium has come to seem passé as artists have begun to enlist video and software alongside their brushes and canvases. In this survey, the focus is artists who have lured technology into the painterly process, at times barely even touching the works that result with their own hands. Take the case of Avery Singer’s paintings made using Google SketchUp, for which the artist created the underdrawings of her canvases on a computer and then filled in her digital figures by hand using acrylic, effectively marrying brushstroke and keystroke.

November 9, 2024–April 13, 2025

“Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon” at MoMA PS1, New York

Starting in 2002, choreographer Ralph Lemon began to visit Yazoo, Mississippi, to spend time Walter Carter, a former sharecropped whom Lemon engaged as his collaborator. Together, the two would reenact portions of Solaris and Alphaville , and use the language of those famed arthouse films to speak to alienation resulting from years and years of racism. Photographs and videos related to that ongoing project, formally titled 1856 Cessna Road , is among the 60 works in this survey, which highlights this influential artist’s sprawling network. Accordingly, though its title makes it appear like a one-person show, its participants are many: Kevin Beasley is set to debut a new video and sound installation with Lemon here, and Okwui Okpokpwasili, Darrell Jones, and more are on tap to perform live in the museum’s galleries.

November 14, 2024–2025

“Cassils: Movements” at SITE Sante Fe, New Mexico

In 2022, for a Cassils performance called Human Measure , six trans and nonbinary performers moved around on stage in low light on a muslin canvas treated with cyanotype solution. That canvas ended up recording their bodies, acting as a “visual language that denies [the] kind of invisibility” typically afforded to trans and nonbinary people, as the artist as put it. Cassils will continue honing that visual language with sound and video installations that rework Human Measure for a gallery space, effectively ensuring that the artist’s temporary performances are made permanent.

November 15, 2024–February 3, 2025

“Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream…” at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas

Two years before Philip Guston’s paintings of Klansmen initiated widespread controversy, Vincent Valdez faced similar scandal for showing his own 30-foot-long painting of these hooded white supremacists. With its grand scale and its piercing detail, the piece exemplified Valdez’s unique ability to stare back at forces of evil and present them to the public, whether it is ready to look at these images or not. Valdez’s first-ever museum survey marshals his drawings, paintings, prints, and more, taking up subjects such as violence inflicted upon immigrants and the strength of the Latinx community in the face of it along the way.

November 15, 2024–March 23, 2025

“Luc Tuymans: The Past” at UCCA Contemporary Art Center, Beijing

Well before the current craze for figurative painting, Luc Tuymans made a name for himself during the ’90s with canvases featuring imagery appropriated from the media, then largely drained of color. His subjects would go on to include Condoleezza Rice, stills from Singin’ in the Rain and Mulholland Drive , and alienated-looking people; though not always political, the paintings seemed to allude to the loss of history and the pervasiveness of evil. Eighty of Tuymans’s pictures will figure in this show, which places a specific focus on his work about China, a country whose globalized economy has long fascinated the Belgian artist.

November 16, 2024–February 16, 2025

“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Amy Sherald made a splash when, in 2018, she unveiled her official portrait of Michelle Obama, who was pictured wearing a Michelle Smith–designed dress that flowed beautifully across her legs, cutting through Sherald’s eggshell blue background. This sharp painting looked like few other official portraits before it, and it cemented Sherald’s reputation as a painter of note. This show, her first mid-career survey, seals the deal, bringing together 50 paintings of Black men, women, and children, all pictured against monochromatic backgrounds. Expect the exhibition to attest to how Sherald altered the trajectory of figurative painting.

November 16, 2024–March 9, 2025

“Joseph Beuys: In Defense of Nature” at the Broad, Los Angeles

Around the same time as this exhibition, a new work called Social Forest: Oaks of Tovaangar by archaeologist Desireé Reneé Martinez and artist Lazaro Arvizu Jr., will see 100 California oak trees planted in Elysian Park. It’s a gesture that doubles as a conceptual artwork and an ecological renewal initiative, and one that’s meant to recall Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, 1982), for which the German artist planted thousands of trees in Kassel, Germany. Did that work make Beuys an accidental eco-art pioneer? This 400-work survey suggests that when Beuys manipulated the landscape around him, he thought deeply about humanity’s shifting relationship to the environment, whose tenuousness he understood well before climate change became a public concern.

November 16, 2024–April 6, 2025

“Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now” at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

This ambitious show proves that for many Black artists of the past century and a half, the Egypt of millennia ago remains a force in the present. Expected artists figure in the show’s 150-person list: Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, a Harlem Renaissance sculptor who recycled pharaonic imagery for a new age; Kara Walker, who sexualized sphinx sculptures have provoked controversy and admiration; Awol Erizku, whose photographs have featured miniature recreations of Egyptian statues. But the participants also include multihyphenates such as Sun Ra and Solange, whose works in various fields have ensured that ancient Egyptian styles continue to infiltrate pop culture.

November 17, 2024–February 17, 2025

“The 80s: Photographing Britain” at Tate Britain, London

A miners’ strike, the AIDS pandemic, a conservative crackdown on the queer community: all this and more happened in England during the 1980s, a decade whose tumult gave way to a photographic revolution. Rather than making overarching pronouncements about all the pictures that resulted, this 350-work show opts for variety, spotlighting both documentary and conceptual modes alike while also featuring works that sometimes do not look much like traditional photography at all. Many artists here blend multiple modes of working; the Scottish photographer Maud Sulter, for example, often pictured Black women playing semi-fictional characters as a means of questioning how race is performed.

November 21, 2024–May 5, 2025

“Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet” at Tate Modern, London

Many technologically minded art exhibitions in the past decade have used the birth of the World Wide Web, in 1989, as a starting point. Here, however, it is the endpoint, with nearly all this show’s contents focusing on artworks made in the pre-internet age. Staples of postwar art history will figure here, among them Atsuko Tanaka’s Electric Dress (1957), a wearable sculpture formed from multicolored light bulbs. But generally, the focus is on art awaiting canonization, from experiments done by the Yugoslavian New Tendencies artists of the 1960s to Samia Halaby’s abstractions done on an Amiga 1000 computer during the 1980s.

November 28, 2024–June 1, 2025

“Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film” at Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Not quite an art exhibition yet not quite a design show either, this cross-disciplinary survey sets out to explore how digital technologies have reshaped artists’ ability to portray reality since the 1980s. It’s a wide-ranging inquiry, and so the offerings are unusually expansive, with a clip from Jurassic Park placed within the same galleries as work by Petra Cortright, whose webcam-shot videos, often augmented with chintzy digital effects, made her a closely watched artist during the post-internet era. Then again, tools like Photoshop can be used to many different ends, from digital design to conceptual photography, and the show is meant to be open-ended as a means of reflecting that.

November 24, 2024–July 13, 2025

“Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968” at Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles

The paintings of Photorealist artists such as Audrey Flack and Robert Bechtle look like camera-made images, even though they were produced by hand using oil and acrylic. That, of course, was the point: these artists sought to question whether painting could function like photography in its quest to portray life itself. Often derided as kitsch (even though these artists were sometimes trying for just that, “good” taste be damned), Photorealism gets proper consideration with this survey. The show charts the movement’s evolution during the 1970s and then expands it to the current moment, offering up figurative painters such as Gina Beavers and Sayre Gomez as modern-day inheritors to artists like Flack and Bechtle.

November 23, 2024–May 4, 2025

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