The painter Vincent Van Gogh is well-known for his artworks and for a particular aspect of his

personal life: the post-impressionist spent some time in a psychiatric clinic. There, he produced
artworks such as Starry Night and many of his famous self-portraits.

Besides suffering from anxiety and depression, the artist also faced a crisis of
epilepsy. Some experts believe that the painter suffered from xanthophyl – and
this factor affected his art, since Van Gogh was to see more yellowish colors, he
intensified yellows in his paintings.
In addition to Van Gogh, many other artists had similar problems. Today I’ll
introduce two more artists who suffered from a mental illness – and how it
affected their art.

1. Louis Wain (1860-1939)

Louis Wain was a born in 1860 English illustrator who became well known for
his illustrations of anthropomorphic cats. The big-eyed cats, who are usually in
social situations, such as games or dating, were not initially created on a
commission. Although Wain had been already known by the public, he began to
draw cats to amuse his wife.

Unfortunately, shortly after he married, Wain lost his wife to cancer. And her
death was the trigger for a deep depression in the artist’s life.

At age 57, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a disorder that affects not only
a person’s way of thinking, but also their behavior. Wain began to act
aggressive, so he spent the last 15 years of his life in psychiatric institutions.

It was not only his personality that was affected: Wain’s works of art also began
to have a style less and less similar to his initial artworks. His cats, before smiling
and cuddly, began to show different traits, they turned more geometric and
colorful. Most of these psychedelic kittens were born when Wain was
hospitalized at Napsbury Hospital, where the artist died.
 2. Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
“I can not get rid of my illnesses, for there is a lot in my art that exists only
because of them,” wrote the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, famous for the
painting The Scream and for being one of the main artists of the expressionist
movement.
Munch’s family background already predisposed him to possible mental health
problems. His mother and one of his sisters died of tuberculosis when he was
still very young. Her father suffered from depression and her other sister was
diagnosed with schizophrenia. Munch did not go unharmed. He had a mental
breakdown in 1908, which was aggravated by alcoholism, and was admitted to a
mental health clinic in Denmark.

In addition to the known mental problems, the painter still faced other issues: in
1937, his works were confiscated by Hitler’s government, in the exhibition that
the dictator called “degenerate art“.

Munch wrote that “sickness, madness, and death were the black angels that
guarded my crib,” and even came to be diagnosed with neurasthenia, a clinical
condition associated with hysteria and hypochondria. His work is characterized
by figures whose sense of despair and anguish are evident. The strokes and
colors that Munch uses in his compositions often demonstrate his own state of
mind.

The subject of mental illness and art has often been discussed, especially in
recent years. It is undeniable that there is a relationship, especially if we think of
art as an elementary form of human communication. From this perspective,
artistic production would not only be a response to disease but a form of output,
an escape valve.