Van Gogh’s letters: passions of a true saint soon published

CAIRO - 7 May 2017: Vincent Van Gogh’s valuable authenticated letters will soon be published in a book titled "The Sincere Always, Vincent...Van Gogh’s Selected Letters."

The book will be published by Kotb Khan for publishing and distribution, and is expected to contain about 265 of Van Gogh's most important speeches. Writer and translator Yasser Abdellatif, along with Mohamed Magdy, spent about three years writing the book.

These letters are the result of more than 25 years of hard work by a team of editors and specialists at the Van Gogh Museum, which includes his works in Amsterdam, in cooperation with the Constantin Higgins Institute of texts and intellectual history of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. The full archive of messages was published in Dutch, French and English in 2009.

These messages provide a detailed view of life of the legendary artist who changed the face of modern art, and tell stories about the origins of his work and the development of his ideas about life, art and literature. These autobiographical letters portray 18 years of his life. Most of the letters were addressed to his brother Theo, his loyal friend and faithful sponsor.

Van Gogh (1853-1890) is the most important modernist art figure. During the ten years of his artistic career, Van Gogh made an enormous contribution of artwork, more than 2,000 pieces, mostly during his last two years in France, where he died in the summer of 1890.

He also used a high literary style in writing the letters he produced almost daily, recording his suffering with art and mirroring his artistic, cultural and social life in the late 19th century in the Netherlands, Belgium, England and France.

Van Gogh lived a stormy life, and in many times he was dominated with mania and mental disorders. During his lifetime, he succeeded in selling very few of his paintings, causing him permanent frustration and psychological problems.

Although the rest of the family boycotted him for long periods of time, his loyal brother was keen to deliver Van Gogh’s splendid artistic heritage to the world. His letters contributed to his image as an exceptional person who suffered the passions of a true saint to deliver his artistic message. Some Dutch critics argue that the value of Van Gogh as a writer, as reflected in these letters, may outweigh his value as a photographer and painter.