A mentally disturbed artist who, among other things, created amazing and somewhat trippy art, cut his own ear off for his lover, helped bring forward the impressionism era of art and screamed at people.

1853-90
A dutch artist who while happy in childhood became grim, impoverished, melancholic and difficult-but he painted works that are now among the world's best known, best loved, and most expensive.

He came late into his artistic vocation, after years of unfulfilling careers, failed love affairs, poverty, and spiritual crises. His obsessive letters to his devoted brother, Theo, which often explain work in detail, formed the source material for the quickly emergent cult that continues to grow around him.

His style was self-taught, instantly recognizable, he used paint straight from the tube and applied it as thick as furrows. He distorted form and color in order to express inner feelings, moving away from the reproduction of literal visual appearances toward a symbolic and expressive synthesis.