Bergamo, at the Creberg «The last days of Van Gogh»

The last seventy days of life of Vincent Van Goghthe lesser known, also from an artistic point of view, will be staged on Wednesday 23 November at the Crebergby Marco Goldin, an art critic from Treviso who has studied the Dutch painter for a quarter of a century. The show The last days of Van Gogh. The rediscovered diarywith instrumental music by Franco Battiatocreates an almost cinematographic effect of amazement with the reproductions of the paintings, the details, the vintage photos and the film contributions shot in the places of the famous painter in Holland, Belgium and France.

Van Gogh spent his final weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. They were the most feverish: he made 77 paintings and about thirty drawings. But he did not paint the Sunflowers, nor other iconic canvases. The only exceptions are The Wheatfield with a Flight of Crows and the Portrait of Doctor Gachet. Many works of that period are in private hands – anticipates Goldin -: a dozen are kept in the Orsay Museum in Paris and cannot be loaned. And those paintings are precious because a greater devotion is found to the soul and interiorityare a sort of summary of an entire life.

The project stems from the novel by Goldin himself, who also made it a podcast in five episodes. The first pages were written during the penultimate exhibition that he curated, dedicated to the Dutch genius, set up in the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza and which attracted half a million visitors. The narrative device the discovery of artist diary, a somewhat ragged notebook, in dark green leather, with gold embroidery and a black spine, from Arthur Gustave Ravoux, the proprietor of the inn where Vincent lived between the end of May and the end of July 1890, when decided to end his life. There were two weeks left before the painter’s death when Ravoux went up to his room, in the attic, and found the diary in the drawer of the desk he had just pulled up. The other facts narrated really happened.

In those weeks Van Gogh wrote fewer letters, spoke of painting, reflected on the artists of the time, and of spirituality – anticipates the art critic -. I declined the story, leaning on his paintings, which bring out moving flashbacks, such as when he accompanied his father to the station for the last time and reflects on the pain of loss. Goldin also works on pruning clichés and stereotypes. Vincent was not poor at all – he says -. In the ten years that he was supported by his brother Theo, he received an average of 200 francs a month: a civil servant earned between 120 and 150 a month and he had a wife and children to support. And he wasn’t even crazy, contrary to popular belief. He received a single diagnosis of epilepsy from the director of the mental hospital in Provence, where he chose to be admitted because he needed quiet. So how can we make a diagnosis 130 years later? Rather, Van Gogh suffered from active melancholy, a syndrome that led him to paint masterpieces, the fruit of extreme sensitivity. At 21. Tickets are available on Ticketone and at the ticket office.