One of the greatest and controversial post-impressionist artists of the 19th century was the Dutchman Vincent Van Gogh. “Sunflowers” is the very picture that made him known to the whole world.
The history of the creation of a series of world masterpieces
In 1888, in May, Van Gogh rents a smalla house in Arles, on Lamartin Square, he will depict it later on in the painting “Yellow House”. He dreams of creating a shelter for artists who are close in outlook and spirit, a school of fine art in which everything would have its own style, and on the walls would hang its sunflowers, half a dozen paintings only with these yellow flowers.
Waiting for the arrival of Gauguin, Van Gogh paints his firstsunflowers. A lively and bright picture symbolized the joy of meeting a friend. These were not calm and silent flowers, they shouted! Screamed with gratitude about everything that felt then the artist. Then there were more sunflowers, many more sunflowers! For Van Gogh, they represented something more than just flowers in the sense we used to treat them. In a letter to his brother Theo, the artist wrote that he considered the peony to be the favorite flower of Zhannin, the mallow was Quota, and the sunflower, in a sense, belongs to him. Van Gogh wrote two cycles of paintings: Parisian (1887) with lying flowers and Arlesky (1888) with flowers in the decanter. It is unlikely that anyone will be able to answer with precision what the maestro inspired on the love of sunflowers, but it is well known that schizophrenics are very fond of yellow, it is not for nothing that psychiatric hospitals are painted precisely in it.
A little bit about the unsurpassed technique of writing the great Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh's painting "Sunflowers" is made specialwriting technique - impasto. Its essence is that oil paints are applied in a very thick layer with the help of not only traditional brushes, but also a knife. Strokes scattered on the canvas as horrible. The rough, relief surface of the picture conveys all the inside of the artist, all the power of feelings and experiences. For an artist, a stroke is a kind of gesture, facial expression, intonation. For these restless and defiant strokes, you can determine the state of the “speaker” spirit. A very talented artist and deeply sensitive man was Van Gogh.
Van Gogh. Sunflowers bloom on his canvases for 125 years
Vincent van Gogh lived a difficult life full ofsuffering, frustration and madness. Her most prosperous time, which took place in southern Arles, was marked by the writing of seven masterpieces, seven paintings with yellow flowers. Van Gogh's Sunflowers, as well as the Sistine Madonna for the legendary Raphael, the Gioconda for the unsurpassed Leonardo da Vinci and the Black Square for avant-garde Malevich, became decisive and of great importance in the work of this great artist. The most famous of the series of paintings painted in Arles is currently in the National Gallery of London.
