“I dream of painting and then I paint my dream”.

Intellectual, romantic, excessive and expressive, one of the most famous painters of the 19th century; Vincent van Gogh comes to the Museum of Cultures of Milan from 21 September 2023 to 28 January 2024. The aim of the exhibition is to overturn the stereotype of the obscure and tormented artist, presenting a Vincent van Gogh who was less an outsider and more surprisingly in line with the cultural debate of his time.

The exhibition offers a chronological and thematic journey that provides a new reading of the work of the Dutch artist, and that highlights the relationship between the artistic vision and the depth of the cultural aspect of the artist. It explores two important themes; on the one hand his love for literature, and on the other his fascination with Japan, which was driven by his love of Japanese prints, “Japonaiserie”, as he would call them, which he collected extensively, also thanks to their relatively reasonable cost at the time. It was a passion that began in 1886, when the artist moved to Paris and met the French-German merchant Siegfried Bing.

The exhibition has been created and promoted thanks to the excellent collaboration between the Kröller-Müller museum of Ottlero, 24 Ore Cultura- Gruppo 24 Ore, the Municipality of Milan and the MUDEC, as well as to the curation of Professor Francesco Poli, Mariella Guzzoni, Aurora Canepari and Edoardo Chiossone.

As the painter wrote in a letter to his brother Theo: “I can do nothing about it if my paintings don't sell. The day will come, though, when people will see that they're worth more than the cost of the paint”.