12 interesting facts about van Gogh

2015-06-22 11:12:00 249

We all admire the work of one of the greatest artist ever lived Vincent van Gogh. Born in the Netherlands March 30, 1853 he works for 10 years. Nowadays his paintings are sold for millions of dollars but not many people know that he didn't have enough money and he needed his brother's support to buy canvases and paints so he can work. Only after his death his name was recognized as one of the most significant and influential names in the history of art and postimpressionism. Here are some interesting facts about the life of van Gogh:

1. Van Gogh was named after his grandfather but he also had a brother with the same name who died at birth a year earlier.

2. Van Gogh started working on his first piece when he was 27 without any training. Almost entirely self-taught he starts experimenting with colors and paints to create some of the most significant pieces in the history of art.

3. In the beginning van Gogh was painting peasants on the field, flowers and orchards. He just couldn't afford to pay the models. He creates 37 self-portraits attaching candles on top of his hats so he can see at night.

4. Van Gogh was diagnosed with schizophrenia and temporal epilepsy, a chronic neurological illness causing seizues and heavy halucinations. In one of these seizures van Gogh attacks Paul Gauguin with a knife. Noone knows if he did it himself or it was Gauguin who cut his left ear but we do know for sure that the after that incident Vincent was admitted in the Saint-Paul asylum after a he gave the part of his earlobe to a prostitute with the instructions to take care of it.

5. Staring through the window of his room in Saint-Paul asylum van Gogh painted one of his most significant pieces of art "The Starry night". 

6. Scientist studying van Gogh's art scanned and digitalized his works. They discovered an amazing conincidence between van Gogh's interpretation of luminance in "The Starry night" and the matematical model of turbulence. This occures in other works also, but only in the ones finished in the asylum.

7. Van Gogh considered his  "The Starry night" a failure. In a letter sent to his brother he writes that his painting: "says nothing to me" and he doesn't send it together with the other paintings. Today it's valued at more than $100 million.

8. For 10 years van Gogh produced over 2000 art works including almost 900 oilpaintings and 1300 drawings and sketches meaning that he finished 2 paintings every week.

9. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his entire life - The Red Vineyard just two years before he died. He was highly dependent on his brother's financial support. Theo van Gogh was an art dealer working in Paris. He was the one sending him materials and canvases so Vincent can work and he was the one introducing him to other big artists at the time like Paul Gauguin and Claude Monet. 

10. When first painted his Sunflowers, van Gogh used yellow colors that changed in time. In other words what you see now is not what van Gogh was seeing back then. With time colors faded and yellow got brown.
            

11.Johanna van Gogh (Theo's wife) collected all his paintings, drawings and letters and dedicated her life to popularize Vincent van Gogh's work and receive the recognition it deserves.

12.Van Gogh dies in France two days after being!!!? shot in his chest. It was believed for many years that he shot himself in the wheat fields but this theory was later denied from his biographers. Noone knows the truth for sure but most probably he was shot by two teenagers playing nearby. When his brother Theo visits him he hears Vincent's last words "La tristesse durera toujours" or "The sadness will last forever".