Culture

Van Gogh's Potato Eaters, featured in an exhibition in Amsterdam

Amsterdam, Oct 7 (EFE) .- (Camera: Imane Rachidi) For Vincent van Gogh, "The Potato Eaters" (1885) was his masterpiece with a realistic message, and he prepared it with dedication, but his brother Theo believed that it was full of mistakes and no one would take it seriously in the Paris art market, so he let it dust on his mantelpiece.FOOTAGE FROM THE EXHIBITION PRESENTED AT THE VAN GOGH MUSEUM IN AMSTERDAM. IT INCLUDES STATEMENTS TO EFE DE BREGJE GERRITSE, CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION.1. He was not looking for technical perfection with his painting, but the message he wanted to convey about peasant life, about the crude honesty of hard life in the countryside. For him, the painting was a success, and although he did not use the term ‘masterpiece’, he considered it similar to the Sunflowers, his Room or La Berceuse.2. His brother Theo was not very impressed, and received harsh criticism from his friend and painter Anthon van Rappard. But Van Gogh continued to believe in his work, for him the message transmitted was more important than the mistakes he had made in painting.3. In 1887, he wrote to his sister Guillermina: "This is my best work." That is very interesting because by then he had already gone to Paris, he had changed his working methods and his style, using more bright colors, but he still had the dark painting of Nuenen in mind.4. If even your best friend and painter Van Rappard was very enthusiastic about the work, no one would have been in Paris. It was just a very dark image, a very difficult subject, it was not a very attractive painting, especially because of all the modern art developments that were happening in Paris that he was still unaware of at the time.