In the summer of 1890 he finds him Vincent Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. He was discharged from the psychiatric clinic of Saint-Remy-de-Provence, where he was hospitalized for a year, he lives in the hotel Artir Ravou, and he is visited by Dr. Paul Gasse, well-known in artistic circles. He works tirelessly, finishing almost a painting a day! However, his mental state remains unstable. He feels that his personal life and his career are in a quagmire. His beloved brother Theo married and became a father. He also set up his own business as an art dealer. He himself feels on the sidelines, uncertainty overwhelms him. In his letters to Theos, already during his imprisonment in the asylum, he expresses his disappointment. “Who am I to most people? A nonentity or otherworldly obnoxious person who has no or never will have status in society? If this is so, then I would like to show with my work what is in the soul of such a strange person, such a nonentity … “. He is also increasingly referring to death. “Artists who have died and are buried speak to the next generation or many generations through their work. In the life of an artist, death may not be the most difficult thing…”.

On July 27 of the same year, he went out into the field, took off his shirt and shot himself in the chest with a Lefosse brand revolver. He was seriously injured and lost consciousness. When he regains consciousness, he manages to return to his room and lie down on his bed. Ravu’s family waits for him for dinner in vain. They are worried. They see drops of blood on the stairs and understand what happened. Two days later, despite the efforts of doctors, the Dutch artist dies in his brother’s arms at the age of just 37, leaving behind almost 2,100 works, including 860 oil paintings, and a legend that is still strong today. On his easel still rests, unfinished, his last work, Roots of Trees. His own roots in life are now cut off by his own hand.

In the last room of the Palazzo Bonaparte in Rome, where a large exhibition on Vincent van Gogh is held until March 26, the atmosphere of those last months is uniquely captured. And this last work may not be among those exhibited, but the curtain falls on a portrait of an old man (van Gogh’s favorite subject), sitting hunched over in an armchair, hiding his face in his hands, seized with despair and despair. other dark emotions that he apparently cannot control. Title of the work: “On the Threshold of Eternity”. Prophetic, perhaps of the coming end.

Fifty of his works, together with photographs, manuscripts and personal effects, reconstruct his personal and artistic career.

In an impressive mansion on the corner of the bustling Piazza Venezia and Via del Corso, where Letizia Ramolino Bonaparte, mother of Napoleon Bonaparte, lived until her death in 1836, fifty works by Vincent van Gogh from the collection of the Dutch Kroller Museum are on display. exhibition-Miller in Oterlo along with photographs, manuscripts and personal effects in a way that reconstructs both his personal and artistic career. The exhibition traces his journey from Zindert, a small Dutch village (where he was born, the son of a pastor), Brussels and London (where he worked as an art dealer and preacher) to Paris and Arles (where he now devoted himself to painting). ). It also captures changes in his artistic expression. The gloomy landscapes of his youth, depicting the gloomy everyday life of working people in his homeland (workers, potato pickers, lumberjacks, women carrying heavy bags of coal or digging earth) are replaced by thematic and color freedom. he experiences in France, on the wave of the Impressionist movement, with his still lifes and brightly lit landscapes. He has already mastered a new, more direct and more “lively” language.

Of particular interest are his self-portraits, which are presented in the Bonaparte Palace, during his lifetime he created more than thirty. Not because of narcissism, as some believe, but for practical reasons: he could not afford to hire models. The people who influenced him play a key role in the “narrative” from room to room: his parents and his brother, his few close friends and the artists with whom he was associated in France, such as Edgar Degas, Georges Serra, Toulouse-Lautrec . and Paul Gauguin. A wild fight with the latter caused him his first psychotic attack, during which Van Gogh cut off his ear.

Theo died just six months after his brother committed suicide. They were buried nearby. His health was already failing, and the calamity worsened his condition. After all, the bond between them was very strong. She had already inherited all of Vincent’s works (only one of which Vincent managed to sell), which then passed into the hands of his widow Joanna. Thanks to the perseverance and persistent efforts of this woman, the name of Van Gogh gradually began to be recognized. It was she who organized the first retrospective with 480 of his works in Amsterdam. Among the first was sold to an art dealer from Rotterdam “Starry Night”, which in 1941 was bought by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This painting, one of the most famous in the world, was created in Saint Remy de Provence. This is a print on the canvas of the view from the window of his room. In the room of the Bonaparte Palace, the Starry Night becomes three-dimensional, with video on the walls, ceiling and floor. The colors are mesmerizing, it seems as if you are spinning among the stars. Leaving this particular room, the visitor will see Van Gogh’s phrases from his letter to Theo written on the wall. “I love walking. I wish that at the end of our lives we could walk somewhere together and, looking back at the past years, say “we did this” or “we did that.” If we want it and achieve it, then will there be something to say?