VAN GOGH
Few stories in the history of art carry quite the weight of Vincent van Gogh's. Today, his paintings draw record-breaking auction prices and pull vast crowds into museums across the world. It's a strange and sobering irony, then, that the man himself lived and died in near-total obscurity, his work met with indifference by the very public that now adores it. While producing the canvases we now regard as cornerstones of Western painting, van Gogh was fighting a far more private battle. Crippling depression and acute anxiety shadowed his days, and those conditions ultimately proved fatal. He took his own life in 1890, just weeks past his 37th birthday. Walther's book confronts all of this with real thoroughness. It brings together a substantial biographical and critical study of van Gogh's life and practice with a complete catalogue of all 871 of his paintings. That combination makes it something genuinely useful: part portrait of a tortured individual, part scholarly reference work. Whether you're approaching van Gogh for the first time or returning to him with fresh eyes, this volume offers plenty to sit with.
- Author: Ingo F. Walther
- Publisher: Taschen GmbH
- Genre: Painting
- ISBN: 978-3836557153
- Pages: 741 pages