Last Saturday, I visited the exhibition dedicated to Vincent van Gogh open in Trieste, Italy, at the Revoltella Museum until June 30, 2024. It’s an extraordinary opportunity to admire many paintings by this great artist on loan from the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, in the Netherlands, and some on loan from the National Gallery of Rome for a total of 49 paintings and drawings.

Note. I’m not an art expert and this article is not art criticism. If you’re interested in discussions about Vincent van Gogh’s brushstrokes, this article is definitely not for you.

When the exceptional exhibition of Vincent van Gogh’s works was held in Rome in late 2010 and 2011, distance made it too difficult for me to travel so far to see it. Having an exhibition of van Gogh’s works in my region in collaboration between Arthemisia, a leading company in the organization of art exhibitions, and the municipality of Trieste was too tempting an opportunity and I didn’t miss it!

Vincent van Gogh’s story is well-known with his troubled and short life due to his tragic death and the posthumous fame that took him from an almost unknown painter in life to one of the greatest icons of modern art after his death.

The exhibition in Trieste includes some projections that concern the life of Vincent van Gogh and the growth of his fame after his death, which also concern Helene Kröller-Müller, the art collector who was among the first to recognize this artist’s greatness.

On the walls of the rooms, there are reproductions of documents from the time connected to Vincent van Gogh’s life and death and there are quotes from his letters to his brother Théo, the person with whom he maintained a close bond throughout his life. This allows even visitors who have a vague knowledge of this artist to understand his story and the artistic influences that led to his choices as a painter.

One of the last rooms of the exhibition offers a 360° projection of images reproducing many works by Vincent van Gogh with an effect that makes it almost a holodeck. The effect is evocative even if it’s the only room in which there are no real works but only plays of light.

To someone like me, not an art expert, it seemed strange that there isn’t even a painting from the Sunflower series because they are the most iconic of Vincent van Gogh’s subjects together with his Starry Night. Evidently, it wasn’t possible to have one on loan but I discovered many others which allowed me to get to know other subjects by this great artist.

Vincent van Gogh was a painter who used ordinary people, even very poor ones, as subjects. In a world that had become industrialized, weavers were artisans who had lost the prestige they had centuries before. Between late 1883 and the summer of 1884, in the Dutch village of Nuenen, van Gogh produced a series of portraits and drawings that had weavers as their subjects.

An art expert might know the Weavers series well but for me it was a discovery. This also helped me to learn more about the life of Vincent van Gogh because he’s an author who really drew and painted what he lived. To see his works is to truly see through them what Vincent saw.

An hour is all in all very little to get to know Vincent van Gogh and above all to understand him but the visit to the splendid exhibition in Trieste is still a great experience. The end of the visit shouldn’t represent the end of your interest in this artist, indeed it should stimulate some reflection. On the way home, I had moved thoughts about how van Gogh transformed the pain of his tormented life into beauty. The depression that led him to suicide is truly an ugly thing and yet he gave us so much beauty. Thank you, Vincent!