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Post-Impressionism · 1889
Vincent van Gogh 1853–1890
MoMA · New York
Painted from his asylum window before dawn, Van Gogh's sky will not hold still — eleven stars and a moon swirl over a village he imagined.
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The world it was painted in, the life of the painter, and a close reading of the details. This film is free in Hear Art.
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Chapter 1 of 7
June, eighteen eighty-nine. Vincent van Gogh is a voluntary patient in the asylum at Saint-Rémy, in the south of France. From the barred window of his room, before sunrise, he paints this — not what he sees, but what he feels, and largely from memory.
He would sell almost nothing in his lifetime. This sky would become one of the most beloved images ever made.
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