Van Gogh was the painter we all know, but also an extremely cultured intellectual; and to understand the complexity of his personality, beyond the most overused clichés, it is important and necessary to focus not only on his poetics and his pictorial technique but also on the richness and depth of the cultural interests that are at the basis of his vision of life and art.

This exhibition, which the MUDEC in Milan presents to the public from 21 September 2023 to 28 January 2024 , intends to go precisely in this direction: it overturns the perspective of the Van Gogh stereotype and presents a Vincent van Gogh who is less of an outsider and more surprisingly up-to-date on the cultural debate of his time: a passionate reader and collector of prints, as well as an attentive observer of the most current artistic trends. Through a journey that is both chronological and thematic at the same time, the exhibition offers a new reading of Van Gogh's works which highlights in particular the relationship between the pictorial vision and the depth of the artist's cultural dimension, through the development of two themes of great importance: on the one hand that of his passionate interest in books, and on the other the fascination for Japan fueled by his love for Japanese prints, collected by himself in large numbers.

The curatorship of the exhibition is entrusted to the art historian Professor Francesco Poli, Mariella Guzzoni, researcher and curator of the common thread "Van Gogh: living with books", which runs throughout the exhibition and Aurora Canepari, curator in charge of the Museum of Oriental Art Edoardo Chiossone of Genoa, curator of the “Van Gogh and Japonism” section.

The exhibition, produced by 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE and promoted by the Municipality of Milan-Cultura, is made possible thanks to the collaboration with the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands, which has an extraordinary collection of paintings and drawings by the painter Dutch second only to that of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.