at 26 January 2015
In 2015 a great number of European places and institutions will be organizing a variety of exhibitions, experiences and events to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the death of Vincent van Gogh on 29th July 1890.
It was in France, his adoptive country, that Van Gogh in just under five years painted all the pictures that were to make him famous. It was also in France, in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, that his doom-haunted existence came to an end. This was where he breathed his last in tragic circumstances that are destined forever to be veiled in mystery. Should it be regarded as the culmination of a yearning for the infinite, or the brutal rupture of a mythic destiny? Van Gogh carried the answer with him to his tomb…
In the press kit “In the footsteps of Van Gogh” you will find files on : Auberge Ravoux known as “The House of Van Gogh”, The House of Dr Gachet, The Château of Auvers, Musée Daubigny, The Absinth Museum, The Auvers Gallery of Contemporary Art, The House and Studio of Daubigny, the Festival of Auvers-sur-Oise, the Auvers-sur-Oise Tourist Office, Destination Impressionnisme.
Today Auvers-sur-Oise is a veritable open-air museum where there is a kind of emotional truth that counts for more than historical fact.
Auvers-sur-Oise is where one comes to meditate at the twin tombs of the Van Gogh brothers and commune with their occupants. Just a few feet away, over the cemetery wall, the communicant can see and hear the wind whistling in the fields of wheat, all the while listening to the tolling of the bells in the church immortalized by Vincent. It is painted in colours that only he was capable of finding on his palette and through which he stripped his soul naked to the gaze of the art-lover.
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