Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch0 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a

Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most

famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In a decade, he
created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of
which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still
lifes, portraits, and self-portraits characterised by bold colours and dramatic,
impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations
of modern art. He was not commercially successful and, struggling
with severe depression and poverty, committed suicide at the age of 37.
Van Gogh was born into an upper-middle-class family. As a child he was
serious, quiet and thoughtful. He began drawing at an early age and as a
young man worked as an art dealer, often traveling, but became depressed
after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as
a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and
solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having returned home to his
parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially; the two kept
a long correspondence by letter.
Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes, delusions and, though he
worried about his mental stability, often neglected his physical health, did not
eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a
confrontation between the two when, in a rage, Van Gogh severed a part of
his own left ear with a razor. After, he spent time in psychiatric hospitals,
including a period at Saint-Rémy. Once he discharged himself and moved to
the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care
of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression persisted and on 27
July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a
revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.
Van Gogh's paintings did not sell during his lifetime, during which he was
generally considered a madman and a failure, although some collectors
recognised the value of his work. His fame came only after his death, when he
evolved in the public imagination into a misunderstood genius.[6] His
reputation grew in the early 20th century as elements of his style came to be
incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained
widespread critical and commercial success over the ensuing decades, and is
remembered as an important but tragic painter whose troubled personality
typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist.
Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to
have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name,
the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest
collection of his paintings and drawings.
 Summary of Expressionism
Expressionism emerged simultaneously in various cities across Germany as a
response to a widespread anxiety about humanity's increasingly discordant
relationship with the world and accompanying lost feelings of authenticity and
spirituality. In part a reaction against Impressionism and academic art, Expressionism
was inspired most heavily by the Symbolist currents in late-19th-century art. Vincent
van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor proved particularly influential to the
Expressionists, encouraging the distortion of form and the deployment of strong
colors to convey a variety of anxieties and yearnings.

The classic phase of the Expressionist movement lasted from approximately 1905 to
1920 and spread throughout Europe. Its example would later powerfully inform many
individuals, and groups such as: Abstract Expressionism, Neo-Expressionism,
and The School of London.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

 The arrival of Expressionism announced new standards in the creation and judgment
of art. Art was now meant to come forth from within the artist, rather than from a
depiction of the external visual world, and the standard for assessing the quality of a
work of art became the character of the artist's feelings rather than an analysis of the
composition.
 Expressionist artists often employed swirling, swaying, and exaggeratedly executed
brushstrokes in the depiction of their subjects. These techniques were meant to
convey the turgid emotional state of the artist reacting to the anxieties of the modern
world.
 Through their confrontation with the urban world of the early-20th century,
Expressionist artists developed a powerful mode of social criticism in their serpentine
figural renderings and bold colors. Their representations of the modern city included
alienated individuals - a psychological by-product of recent urbanization - as well as
prostitutes, who were used to comment on capitalism's role in the emotional
distancing of individuals within cities.