Van Gogh: Between the wheat and the sky. The masterpieces from the Kroller Muller Museum

A journey that begins in 2018 in Vicenza in the Basilica Palladiana with the Van Gogh exhibition: between wheat and the sky, curated by Marco Goldin, to arrive in Holland in the museum wanted by the great art collector and philanthropist Helene Kroller-Muller, who consecrated the eternity of the Dutch painter, of the one who “sought the infinite between the sky and the wheat fields”.

Van Gogh: Between wheat and sky, streaming documentary on Amazon Prime, directed by Giovanni Piscaglia and written by Matteo Moneta (2018)

Un documentario di uno degli artisti più amati di sempre, andato in onda nel 2018 su Amazon Prime grazie alla produzione di 3d Produzioni e Nero, con la partecipazione dell’attrice Valeria Bruni Tedeschi e la regia di Giovanni Piscaglia, scritto da Matteo Moneta con la collaborazione di Marco Goldin.

A documentary by one of the most beloved artists of all time, aired in 2018 on Amazon Prime thanks to the production of “3d Produzioni” and “Nero”, with the participation of the actress Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and directed by Giovanni Piscaglia, written by Matteo Moneta with the collaboration of Marco Goldin.

An investigation in search of the reasons behind the notoriety and importance of Van Gogh, a painter who went to the extreme to create his paintings going further than anyone else.

The story of Vincent Van Gogh and Helene Kroller-Muller is a timeless encounter, they never met during their lives, but she gave the artist the notoriety he deserved. For her he was the best artist of all time. Helene recognized herself in Van Gogh's torments and saw in his paintings a consolation, a source of comfort. Through her paintings Helene, but also future generations, we, perceive what it means to be human, because Van Gogh was before a painter, a man capable of touching the strings of humanity.

"Two souls in search of a total faith that could not exist in real life".

Helene, a German art collector who lived in the second half of the 1800s, twenty years after the painter's death (about 1909), began to buy his paintings, creating a collection whose importance was sanctioned by the Kroller-Muller museum, works that survived even the Nazi raids. A sober building made of simple bricks in the middle of Otterlo's nature with which it converses through its glazed corridors. Helene's will was to create a monumental building, so much so that she came to call Mies Van der Rohe, but the Kroller-Muller family fell into economic disgrace. Helena, however, did not give up on her dream and so she gave birth to this sober museum which hides many of Van Gogh's greatest masterpieces inside. As humble from the outside as it is superb from the inside. A temple, a sanctuary to celebrate and guard the Dutch artist's masterpieces.

The documentary presents the world of Van Gogh filtered through the eyes of Helena who admire a terrace of a café during a Parisian night, the life of Dutch peasants whose faces are furrowed with fatigue, paths and landscapes in Provence, a table with lemons and oranges in front of a bottle, the wife of a French postman, the air of the then Parisian countryside of Montmartre, the Starry Night, the madhouse of Saint-Rémy, the thatched roofs and the heart of the Auvers countryside with its wheat fields.

A loner, an outcast, "the lowest among the lowest", as Van Gogh defines himself in a letter to his brother Theo. An eccentric character but whose works reflect the truths hidden in his intimacy. A life marked by emotional disturbances vented in a physical and full-bodied brushstroke, deep and expressive, broken and with symbolic colors, predominant in his portraits and self-portraits, interiors and exteriors of houses, landscapes, city views, nocturnal works, workers and peasants in the fields. A heartbreaking humanity that screams loudly in the artist's paintings.

"True painters don't paint things as they are, they paint them as they feel they are."

Henri Toulouse Lautrec and Paul Gauguin, among others, met in the lively French capital of the late 19th century, led him to define his post-impressionist style.

"The study of the South", the much desired community he shared with Gauguin, led him to an extreme gesture. On a cold night on Christmas Eve he took a razor and cut off his left ear, with an almost inhuman coldness he wrapped the severed part of himself and wrapped it in a sheet of newspaper which he had delivered to a prostitute. This insane gesture brought him closer to the world of madhouses, of which he became a patient for a year. From this experience some of Van Gogh's masterpieces were born, among the most appreciated today. The self mutiny soon turned into the most extreme gesture of all, suicide, with a revolver shot himself in the chest. The life of this extraordinary artist died and such a macabre event became one of the reasons for his fame.

“Now my gaze sweeps over a large expanse of meadows and everything is quiet, the sun is disappearing again behind the gray clouds but spreads a golden light over the fields. When you walk for hours and hours through this countryside, you really feel that there is nothing but that infinite expanse of earth, the green mold of wheat or heather and that infinite sky ".

The source of the quotes in the post is the documentary Van Gogh: Between Wheat and Sky