First published 2011
Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith excavate the life of Vincent van Gogh through unprecedented access to the Van Gogh Museum's archives and hundreds of unpublished family letters. The Pulitzer Prize winning authors of Jackson Pollock: An American Saga trace Van Gogh's journey from his early search for purpose through his intense bond with brother Theo to his explosive creative period in Provence. They examine his deep engagement with literature and art, his chaotic romantic entanglements, and his struggles with depression and mental illness. Drawing from Van Gogh's own eloquent correspondence while mining previously untapped family documents, the authors illuminate the restless soul behind the iconic sunflowers and starry nights. This marks the first serious biographical study of the artist in over seventy years. Naifeh and Smith strip away decades of mythology to reveal Van Gogh's psychological complexity with vivid detail and analytical precision, offering readers a fresh understanding of the man whose brief burst of creativity produced some of Western art's most beloved works.
Genres: biography, art, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 19th-century, art-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-study, psychological-complexity
Setting: Provence
Period: 19th-Century
970 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: mental-illness