«We owe Recalcati a deep renewal of psychoanalytic studies in Italy».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——Roberto Esposito, La Repubblica

«Recalcati’s book goes over the painter’s life, tracing his efforts to find a possible symbolical inscription, in spite of the experience of refusal. His painting is the ultimate attempt to reach the absolute through light and colour».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——L’Unità

«A coincise but solid reading of Van Gogh’s work from a psychoanalytic angle».
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　——La Repubblica

★Rights sold in Spanish and simplified Chinese.

Nobody has ever connected Van Gogh’s melancholy to his painting, thus acknowledging the autonomy of art and without relying solely – and simplistically – on biographical evidence: Massimo Recalcati has finally done it. Establishing new and fruitful connections between facts, Recalcati moves form the source of Van Gogh’s psychosis within his family – Vincent was born on the first anniversary of his brother’s death and bore his name – through his choice of living as an outsider because of the disgrace of being a substitute-son, to his total devotion to painting, to the “high yellow note”, that is, to the incandescence of Southern light as he was able to capture it on the cloth.
Did you think you knew each and every shade of Van Gogh’s palette and life? Recalcati will show you how much we have been missing.

Massimo Recalcati is a Lacanian psychoanalyst and teaches Psychopathology of eating behaviour at Pavia University. The scientific director of the Irpa (Istituto di Ricerca di Psicoanalisi Applicata) School of Specialization in Psychotherapy, he recently published Le mani della madre. Desiderio, fantasmi ed eredità del materno (Feltrinelli 2015), L’ora di lezione. Per un’erotica dell’insegnamento (Einaudi 2014); Non è più come prima. Elogio del perdono nella vita amorosa (Cortina, 2014), Il complesso di Telemaco. Genitori e figli dopo il tramonto del padre (Feltrinelli 2013). With Bollati Boringhieri he published Anoressia, bulimia e obesità [Anorexia, bulimia, obesity] (2006) and Forme contemporanee del totalitarismo [Contemporary forms of totalitarian power] (2007).