VAN GOGH's Starry Night: History and Meaning

The starry Night is considered as a van gogh masterpiece, one of the most iconic and recognizable artists in the history of art, a pioneer of post-impressionism and highly influential in the avant-garde of the twentieth century. Despite dying at the young age of 37, Van Gogh painted a large number of pictures, some 900 works. The Star Night, a work from 1889, is one of the last works produced by the artist.

In this lesson from unPROFESOR.com we offer you the history and meaning of The starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh to help you better understand the context, content and relevance of this work to the history of painting.

The starry Nightis one of his most representative works of Van Gogh, being considered one of his masterpieces and some post-impressionist works most influential. A painting that reflects a moment of enormous emotional intensity and the great internal struggles that tormented the painter. Of fragile mental health, Van Gogh found in painting a lifeline, a way to capture his way of seeing and understanding the world and painting.

Van Gogh, born in 1853, died when he was only 37 years old after shooting himself a bullet while receiving psychiatric treatment at the Saint Paul Mental Health Center in Saint Remy. After an intense stay in Paris, painting a lot and making contact with other artists, Van Gogh, suffering from enormous mental fatigue, decided to move to Arles, in the south of France, in February 1888. His idea was to open an art school with Gauguin and other painters.

But it did not turn out well and both fought, taking place the well-known episode of the mutilation of part of your ear, an action that the painter did in a fit of madness and for which he was sent to the Saint-Remy madhouse. In 1890, and before his improvement, he moved to live in Auvers-sur-Oise under the control of Doctor Gachet. Within two months, Van Gogh committed suicide.

It is in this period, Van Gogh produced about 150 works in which he tried to explain this fight against madness and show spirituality and the connection between man and nature. Among the works from that period is The Star Night. A painting that is part of the Saint Paul Asylum series, like Self-portrait with bandaged ear, Lilies, Wheatfield with crows (her last painting of him), and The starry night over the Rhone, inspiration for The Starry Night.

The starry night over the Rhone Y The starry Night

Van Gogh painted The starry night over the Rhone in 1888, a year before he painted The starry Night. During this time he still lived in Arles and captured an idyllic scene, with vibrant brushstrokes and colors. expressive, in which two lovers appear in the foreground and a sky full of stars that transmits serenity.

The starry night over the Rhone Y The starry Night present similar topics, but they were created in completely different contexts. Thus, the vibrant view of The Starry Night was captured from the window of his room in the sanitarium. Is a night vision that Van Gogh paints from memory and that he described his brother Theo in numerous letters.

"Through the iron-barred window, I can glimpse a picture of fenced-in wheat," he wrote in May 1889, "over which in the morning I see the sun rise in all its glory."

Van Gogh painted the view from his window facing east in the nursing home 21 times. Although the series shows various times of day and night and different weather conditions, all works include the line of hills in the distance. Neither shows the bars of his bedroom window.

The starry Night is a fully post-impressionist work in which the artist expresses the turbulence of his emotions in the swirls that appear on the canvas, as well as in the short brush strokes and a wide range of blue and gold tones applied with thick brush strokes.

The composition is balanced, dividing the canvas into two zones:

1. The sky full of swirls, stars and a radiant moon
2. A village that Van Gogh reproduces with freedom, something unusual for the painter.

Thus, although inspired by the vision he had in the sanitarium, it seems that Van Gogh introduced elements of your imagination with the prominent church spire, inspired by the architecture of the Pays Low. The removal of the bars also shows the idealized approach contributed by the painter.

Van Gogh goes out of his way to recreate a night scene, discovering the existing luminosity in the dark, applying the contrast technique and looking for the landscape essenceand yours, both in symbiosis and showing the vitality and symbolism of each element.

Some specialists consider that Van Gogh's work is a Realistic representation of the position of the stars in June 1889. However, others consider it to be the representation of his own Mount of Olives, his suffering and his fear for his future, although some see some hope in the stars. A biblical allegory that appears collected in other works of Van Gogh, collecting in the work natural, religious, philosophical, scientific and personal elements.

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