Crows in the Wheatfield/ Van Gogh

Van Gogh and Edvard Munch were two central sources for the expressionist movement which is most clearly reflected in their obsessive feelings and personal attitudes, generally executed with the same vibrant palette, using open, gestural brushmarks which were characteristic of the individual hand.

'Crows in the Wheatfield' shows the darkened sky and the black crows which have been regarded as symbolic of spiritual treatment, and the absence of human figure as indicative of his crushing loneliness.

Van Gogh had begun in order to communicate, to bring joy and solace to a troubled humanity; yet he felt his titanic efforts had been rejected  and he killed himself with a pistol shot. These qualities make him a heroic figure with whom audiences in the 20th century can so readily identify.

Sunflowers/Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh developed a method of using color that was expressive and symbolic. He said-

"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use my color more arbitrarily so as to express myself more forcibly."

This approach towards art marks the tendency of modern expressionist movement. Van Gogh also brought into use a variation in brushmarks for expressive effect, so that the materiality of the paint surface, its variety of textures, and the general marks vitalize the flat surface with emotional energy. This can be seen clearly in his most popular paintings, 'Sunflowers'.

The Night Cafe/Van Gogh

Vincent 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 for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life and died, largely unknown, at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.


Little appreciated during his lifetime, his fame grew in the years after his death. Today, he is widely regarded as one of history's greatest painters and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art. Van Gogh did not begin painting until his late twenties, and most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years. He produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. Today many of his pieces—including his numerous self portraits, landscapes, portraits and sunflowers—are among the world's most recognizable and expensive works of art.



 The paintings of Van Gogh have a hallucinatory quality though they represent real objects, real places and real people. In many respects, Van Gogh was a completely new type of artist. For arguably, the first time, the expression of personal temperament took precedence over conventional technical facility. While the Romantic Movement had allowed the priviledge of madness to poets, this was not usually extended to creators working in other media. Yet Van Gogh's chronic depression and his agressive and suicidal impulses came to be recognized as integral to what he painted. He emphasized the essential link between his own flawed temperament and his achievement as an artist in a long series of self-portraits.


Each of Van Gogh paintings thus became a cry of anguish as he struggled to release his violent, frustrated passions. Writhing, flame-like forms and agitated brushwork transmit with almost hallucnatory power, the convulsions of his tormented sensibility and, in such baleful works as 'The Night Cafe'. The state of almost permanent anxiety and sense of  instability which threatened to engulf the artist, can be seen reflected in his paintings too. It is painted in disharmonies of red, green and yellow -'to express the terrible passions of humanity'. Van Gogh himself says-

".....the idea that the cafe is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad or commit a crime. So I have tried to express, as it were, the powers of darkness in a low public house, by soft Louis XV greens and malachite, contrasting with yellow-green and harsh-blue greens, and all this in an atmosphere like the devil's furnace, of pale sulphur...."