The turmoil of a fragile soul that intensely desires to live, but has a hard time doing it; the colours and the shapes of an extraordinary artistic talent, which flourished in just 10 years of practice; the genius which was not understood in his time but would conquer the world in the centuries to come.
All of this will be on display at an exhibition in Rome dedicated to Vincent van Gogh.
Organised by Arthemisia, the show opens on October 8 at Palazzo Bonaparte in the Italian capital.
Curated by Maria Teresa Benedetti and Francesca Villanti, the show will present to 50 masterpieces by the artist coming from the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo the Italian public, exhibited in Rome until March 26, 2023.
“There is a human component that arrives immediately, Van Gogh was a pained creature full of desperation, who suffered through life, but wanted to live it”, the show’s curator Maria Teresa Benedetti said, explaining why van Gogh is probably the most-loved painter of all time, even by a public that doesn’t know art.
One of Van Gogh's 1888 self-portraits in the Kröller-Müller colection. (Photo: AAP)
“He had no love, no money, but he was full of a unique talent which he expressed in just 10 years: people like his strong sensibility, even when it reveals its most obscure components.”
Van Gogh’s “path of the soul”, as described by the curator, will be showcased in Rome through the different phases of the painter’s life, (on the eve of the 170 years of his birth, which occurred in the Netherlands on March 30, 1853) in parallel with the evolution of his style.
This includes not only the key episodes of his story (the attacks of insanity, the relationship with his brother Theo in his famous letters, and his suicide in Auvers) but also the phases of his painting, from the dark landscapes of youth, to his sacred study of agricultural work, to the many self-portraits (like the self-portrait of 1887, to be showcased at the exhibit), right up to the metaphysical chromatism of his last days.
