Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by symbolic colourisation and dramatic, impulsive and highly expressive paintwork. He sold only one painting during his lifetime and...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth30 March 1853
CityZundert, Netherlands
But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.
The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent.
I work as diligently on my canvases as the laborers do in their fields.
As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward.
I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.
Everywhere we look, complex magic of nature blazes before our eyes.
I am an artist... It's self-evident that what that word implies is looking for something all the time without ever finding it in full. It is the opposite of saying, 'I know all about it. I've already found it.' As far as I'm concerned, the word means, 'I am looking. I am hunting for it. I am deeply involved.'
In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism, skepticism and humbug, and we shall want to live more musically.
If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it.
I wanted to make people think of a totally different way of living from that which we, educated people, live. I would absolutely not want anyone to find it beautiful or good without a thought.
Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.
I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.
Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.
I do not intend to spare myself, not to avoid emotions or difficulties. I don't care much whether I live a longer or shorter time... the world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt toward it, because I have walked on this earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude I want to leave some souvenir.