Vincent van Gogh's "Self-portrait" (1887) / Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum

A bouquet of wilting sunflowers, a swirling starry night and a bandaged ear.

Few artists in history can be conjured so vividly in the public imagination with just a handful of disjointed images as Vincent van Gogh (1853-90).

The Dutch titan's tumultuous personal life is just as iconic as his highly expressive and distinctive brushwork — a story that transformed him into the archetype of the tortured artist. His tale is a well-known one of unrequited love, destitution, a stormy friendship with Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), battles with mental illness, a tragic suicide and the posthumous fame that followed.

The enduring mystique surrounding the painter — and the staggering sums required to assemble his original works under one roof — are what makes every van Gogh exhibition a big deal.

Vincent van Gogh's "Landscape with Wheat Sheaves and Rising Moon" (1889) / Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum

Such is the case with "Van Gogh: The Great Passion," opening to the public this Friday at the Seoul Arts Center's Hangaram Art Museum.

This marks the first retrospective featuring the art icon's original brushwork in Korea in 12 years. And it's the largest ever staged in the country.

The 76 pieces on display — 39 oil paintings and 37 drawings — are all on loan from the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands. The museum is home to the world's second-largest van Gogh collection, with 88 paintings and over 180 drawings, surpassed only by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Vincent van Gogh's lithograph "The Potato Eaters" (1885) / Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum

Vincent van Gogh's "Sheaves of Wheat" (1885) / Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum

"The Great Passion" offers a straightforward, chronological journey into the life of an art titan who, remarkably, didn't take up painting until the age of 27. Before discovering his true calling, van Gogh stumbled through a string of failed careers as an art dealer, teacher, bookseller and lay preacher.

In a letter to his brother Theo in September 1881, just a year after he embarked on his artistic path, he reflected: "A change has come about in my drawing, both in my manner of doing it and in the result … What used to seem to me to be desperately impossible is now gradually becoming possible."

The show opens with van Gogh's early works from the 1880s, created during his time in the Netherlands. Here, his primary focus was on rural Dutch landscapes, humble farmsteads and the hardy resilience of peasant life. These themes come to life in portraits and landscapes such as "Digger" (1885), "Sheaves of Wheat" (1885), "Loom with Weaver" (1884) and "Head of a Woman Wearing a White Cap" (1884-85) — a figure who would later take center stage in his early masterpiece, "The Potato Eaters" (1885).

Vincent van Gogh's "Interior of a Restaurant" (1887) / Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum

Vincent van Gogh's "Still Life with Plaster Statuette" (1887) / Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum

It wasn't until the painter's arrival in Paris, the thriving heart of modern art, in 1886 that his signature style came to be born.

The dark, moody canvases of his Dutch period, reminiscent of masters like Rembrandt and Frans Hals, gradually gave way to lighter, more vibrant palettes as he became influenced by the Impressionist movement that celebrated light and its shifting qualities over time.

In his two years in the French capital, van Gogh compensated for his lack of formal technical mastery with an unrelenting drive to experiment with color and thickly textured impasto. This creative leap is evident in "Interior of a Restaurant" (1887), "Still Life with Plaster Statuette" (1887) and "Flowers in a Blue Vase" (1887).

The city also marked an era of self-reflection for the artist, quite literally, as seen in his prolific output of self-portraits. Of the more than 30 he produced in his lifetime, 25 were painted during his Paris period, including one featured in the Seoul show.

After two transformative years immersed in the avant-garde energy of Paris, he left for Arles, drawn by the promise of vivid colors and the warmth of the southern sun.

Vincent van Gogh's "The Sower" (1888) / Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum

Vincent van Gogh's "Still Life with a Plate of Onions" (1889) / Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum

During the final two years of his life, the subject matter of van Gogh's work was shaped by his time in three locations: Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers-sur-Oise.

His yearlong stay in Arles marked the most creatively rich chapter of his career, giving rise to some of his most iconic tour de force pieces, including "Sunflowers" (1888), "Café Terrace at Night" (1888), "The Night Café" (1888) and "Bedroom in Arles" (1888).

This period also saw his intense falling-out with Gauguin, culminating in the infamous incident where he cut off part of his left ear — a moment that has become as legendary as his art itself.

One standout piece featured in the Seoul exhibition from his time in Arles is "The Sower" (1888). While inspired by Jean-François Millet's portrayal of rural life, van Gogh infused the scene with the brilliance of the southern sunlight and his strikingly imaginative use of color, transforming it into an expressive vision of agrarian life.

Vincent van Gogh's "The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix)" (1890), left, and "Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate)" (1890) / Courtesy of Kröller-Müller Museum

The final sections of the show are adorned with a poignant collection of portraits, landscapes and a reinterpretation of Eugène Delacroix's Romantic masterpiece, "The Good Samaritan," created during the artist's time in and out of mental hospitals while battling recurring seizures.

"Wheat Stack Under a Cloudy Sky" (1890) on view was completed in July of that year, the same month he took his own life at 37.

A visitor looks at Vincent van Gogh's "Wheat Stack Under a Cloudy Sky" (1890) during a press preview held for the opening of the exhibition, "Van Gogh: The Great Passion," Nov. 22. Newsis

Seo Soun-jou, director of "The Great Passion," reflected on the Dutch painter's unique legacy, noting that while his oeuvre itself had a relatively modest impact on Western art history — compared to giants like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who defined the Renaissance, or Picasso and Matisse, who spearheaded Cubism and Fauvism — it was van Gogh's unwavering artistic spirit amid poverty and personal torment that transformed him into a mythical global icon.

"It's the idea that he poured his tortured soul onto every canvas that continues to captivate audiences worldwide today," Seo remarked.

"Van Gogh: The Great Passion" runs through March 16, 2025, at the Hangaram Art Museum.