The making of Van Gogh

Hi Maria, what sets this exhibition apart from previous Van Gogh shows?

In this exhibition, there is a very clear path that respects the chronology of Van Gogh’s life, during which he only painted for a decade – and didn’t sell any paintings. Half of the paintings on show concern the first five years of his career, when he drew and painted working-class people from his homeland, including farmers, woodcutters, miners, weavers, housewives, and female labourers. This story has not been told before with such care because we were able to call upon the Kröller-Müller Museum’s extensive documentation from this specific period. 

Then we move to Van Gogh’s Parisian period, which was a meditative time for him because he collected more work than he produced. After this follows his stay in Arles, his tumultuous friendship with Paul Gauguin, and his time in the asylum of Saint-Rémy, before his eventual suicide.

This is also a psychological path outlined in the show; during the first five years of his career Van Gogh only used the colour black. It wasn’t until he moved to Paris in 1886 and experienced Impressionism in its final stage, notably at the last and eighth historical Impressionist exhibition, where works by artists including Georges Pierre Seurat and Paul Signac were shown, that his palette changed and became more colourful.

So, from this period, Van Gogh started using light colours, marking a shift in his practice?

Yes, this is something he adopted in his own way – he did not take a scientific approach, like Seurat, for example. Later on, Van Gogh decided to escape the somewhat grey city of Paris and moved to the south of France, which was a vital stage in his career. During this time, his turbulent relationship with Gauguin ultimately led him to slice his ear off.

Despite this, he continued to paint, although he always felt more motivated when he wasn’t in the grips of a crisis. Van Gogh said he wanted to achieve something greater every time he set to work, which inspired him to employ colour in new and original ways.

Why wasn’t Van Gogh successful during his lifetime?

He once said of himself, 'I feel like an old dog with wet paws who enters a place and disturbs everyone, who nobody likes, who annoys everyone. I know very well that I can't be more than a fourth or fifth-ranked artist.'

He wasn’t aware of his ability. He obsessively pursued painting but was never rewarded for it, at least commercially, so it seems he wasn’t seeking validation.

Self-Portrait (1887) is one of the landmark paintings in the exhibition. What makes this work so profound?

The self-portrait on display is the only one that the Kröller-Müller Museum owns. Van Gogh made over 40 self-portraits – he said he wasn’t able to find people to sit for him, which indicates that he lacked social skills. The version in question was painted in Paris, it’s a very expressive and tormented portrait, it is an example of the artist moving towards neo-impressionism, notably in his use of colour.

What was the thought process behind choosing works for the show?

The criterion was to demonstrate vital moments punctuating Van Gogh’s practice. We chose works that best document his life. Many of them depict working-class people – Van Gogh saw beauty in them. He preferred to paint a peasant girl working in the fields wearing a tattered, sun-faded dress, as opposed to a well-dressed, elegant girl. There is hope in his paintings, despite the hardship. We wanted to highlight this.

What do you want people to take away from the show? Do you want them to feel Van Gogh’s artistic genius, his tormented spirit, physiological pain, or something else?

The pain is there, certainly, but if you take his painting The Sower (1888), for example, the act of sowing represents life and production, it is imbued with spiritual value, and it is about giving meaning to life. However, if you take Old Man in Sorrow (On the Threshold of Eternity), it shows a man bent over crying into his hands, which represents something else completely. These emotions resonate with people.

Van Gogh
08 October 2022 - 07 May 2023. Palazzo Bonaparte, Rome.