Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ? 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. He was a pioneer of Expressionism with enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art.

Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief period as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not begin his career as an artist until he was about 27; however during the last ten years of his life, he produced more than 2,000 pieces, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. He worked only with sombre colours until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. Van Gogh incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which he had fully developed by the time he spent at Arles, France. Most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years, amid the recurrent bouts of mental illness which led to his eventual suicide at the age of 37.

A central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards.

Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colours, thick application of paint, distinctive brushstrokes and real-life subject matter, but they were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, to distort form for expressive effect, and to use unnatural or arbitrary colour.

Expressionism was a cultural movement originating in Germany at the start of the 20th-century as a reaction to positivism and other artistic movements such as naturalism and impressionism. page 241 It sought to express the meaning of "being alive"Victorino Tejera, 1966, pages 85,140, Art and Human Intelligence, Vision Press Limited, London and emotional experience rather than physical reality.The Oxford Illustratd Dictionary, 1976 edition, page 294 It is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an emotional effect; it is a subjective art form. Expressionism is exhibited in many art forms, including painting, literature, theatre, film, architecture and music. The term often implies emotional angst. In a general sense, painters such as Matthias Grünewald and El Greco can be called expressionist, though in practice, the term is applied mainly to 20th century works.