Vincent VAN GOGH: Famous Paintings

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the most iconic artists in history. A painter with a personal style in which he prioritized emotional expression over the depiction of an object or a scene. In Van Gogh everything vibrates with thick and nervous brushstrokes and a palette of bright and intense colors. A style described by many critics as tormented and that has influenced numerous artistic movements and movements throughout the 20th century and up to the present day.

His works have also become authentic references for many generations, reaching prices exorbitant at art auctions, although Van Gogh only managed to sell one painting during his lifetime. In this lesson from unPROFESOR.com we offer you a selection of the famous paintings by Vincent Van Gogh so you can enjoy one of the most emblematic painters of the avant-garde of the twentieth century.

Index

1. The Potato Eaters (1885), one of Van Gogh's most famous paintings
2. Van Gogh's Courtesan (1887)
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3. Cafe Terrace at Night (1888)
4. The Sunflowers (1888), Van Gogh
5. The Bedroom at Arles (1889)
6. The Starry Night (1889)
7. The church of Auvers (1890)

Van Gogh, influenced by the realism of Millet or Rembrandt and the impressionists, he was one of the great figures of post-impressionism. An emotional, expressive and spontaneous artist who painted frantically during five years of his life leaving a legacy of about 900 pictures and more than 1600 drawings. Within this huge work stands out a series of most famous works by Van Gogh such as The potato eaters.

This canvas is considered by critics as the Van Gogh's first great work. This painting is part of a series of canvases that the painter made while living with the peasants and workers of Nuenen in the Netherlands. Van Gogh wanted show the harshness of the peasant living conditionss and the effects of that gray and strenuous life on their faces and bodies.

In The Potato Eaters, Van Gogh opens the door to a humble room in which the peasant family huddles to eat a meager and meager portion of potatoes. The loose brushstrokes and earthy and dark colors dominate the entire composition, having only one point of light in the ceiling lamp, the food source and the cups with the drink. The rest is filled with earthy colors like those of the land they cultivate and from which they already seem to be made.

The coarseness of faces and hands surpasses realism and enters fully into the caricature of the characters. The serenity, resignation and humility that show the faces of the protagonists and the scene reveal the veneration that Van Gogh felt for the work and dedication of these peasants. A world away from the colorful and delicate bourgeois world captured by the Impressionists. It is not strange to Theo Van Gogh, if brother, it was impossible to sell these works in Paris. This work is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Like many other artists of the time, Van Gogh was fascinated by Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcuts. Some works of Japanese masters like Hiroshige and Hokusai that came to the West in the mid-nineteenth century and that inspired Van Gogh to create this painting in the reproducing an engraving by Keisai Eisen that appeared on the cover of Paris Illustré magazine (May 1886).

Van Gogh offers a broader perspective by placing a golden background and a water garden with frogs and cranes, names by which prostitutes were referred to in French slang. The use of strong dark color and contours they are already characteristic of Van Gogh's more mature style. It is located in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

We keep getting acquainted with the famous Van Gogh paintings to talk about this canvas, as it is one of the first scenes painted in Arles and the first in which he did a nocturne. The scene is full of luminous surfaces and contrasting colors are a kind of challenge to the darkening sky and in which small stars shine.

Van Gogh presents the terrace of an elegant Arles café located in the heart of the town and a pilgrimage point for many lovers of the painter's work. The gas lights and stars illuminate the terrace with tables and chairs, as well as the clients of the cafe and the waitress, while some people stroll down the street, already in darkness. Van Gogh captures the scene, but also the light and its contrasts and the emotion that painting those causes him. Arles night skies. This is how he told his brother Wil:

"Here you have a night painting without black, with nothing but a beautiful blue, purple and green, and in this environment, the illuminated area is tinted pale sulfur yellow and lemon green."

Van Gogh paints free, with small brush strokes and loose brush strokes to offer us all the details and the palpitation of the street, the terrace and the night of Arles under all the effects of light, both natural and artificial. It is located in the Kröller-Muller Museum, Otterlo (The Netherlands).

This painting belongs to the series of The sunflowers that Van Gogh created to decorate Gauguin's room in the "Yellow House", in which his studio in Arles was located. Van Gogh used throughout the series some big brush strokes to get the texture of the petals, in addition to using a broad spectrum of yellows to achieve the hues of the flowers. Thus, he used both the most intense yellows for the freshest petals and flowers, as well as the ocher ones for the withered ones.

This experimentation with color and the vibrant brushwork of Van Gogh offer a new and incredible interpretation of one of the most classic themes, that of the traditional vase of flowers. Van Gogh knew how to transmit at home brushstroke that idea of ​​the transience of life, as well as the intensity and beauty of the summer of Provence. This painting is located in the National Gallery in London.

The Yellow House of Arles he is once again the protagonist in this painting in which he offers us a view of his room. The perspective is off-center and frees your palette to fill it with vibrant colors full of intensity, leaving aside the realistic representations and pastel colors of the Impressionists.

In his own words, the simplification gave more grandeur to the spaces and objects, in addition to offering the feeling of calm and warmth, inviting rest. It is located in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Without a doubt, this is one of the most important Van Gogh works. Like The sunflowers, The starry Night It is one of the most representative and well-known works of the painter. This painting was painted from memory, being more a sample of his inner life than of a real landscape.

The sky is depicted tumultuous and swirling by curves and lines, trying to find a point of balance and tension in which the cypress trees and the night sky stand out. A painting in which Van Gogh overturns his spirituality by representing his inner feeling in nature. It is in the Museum of Modern Art.

After leaving the Saint-Remy asylum in 1890, Van Gogh traveled to Auvers, a town on the outskirts of Paris. The auvers church It is one of the paintings of the last months of Van Gogh's life, evidencing the internal struggle and mental restlessness that tormented the painter. In this scene Van Gogh prints movement and emotion with a color palette and brush strokes with intense colours and contrasts.

On the other hand, the painter distorts and flattens the church building, depicting it as trapped within his own shadow, an image that seems to reflect his complex relationship to religion and spirituality. A spirituality that Van Gogh finds more in nature.

The thick contours, the elongated and marked brushstrokes and the flat stripes of color are some of the most prominent features of this work. A few days after painting this work, Van Gogh committed suicide. The work is exhibited in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

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• Ngo F / Metzger, Rainer Walther (2020). Van Gogh. Complete pictorial work. Taschen
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• Homburg, Cornelia (2016) The treasures of Vicent Van Gogh. Editors