Between brothers

Can you visualize correspondence?

Milan-based freelance information designer, Federica Fragapane has done just that in her latest project, From Vincent to Theo, a visualization of the letters sent from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo between 1873 and 1890.

Carefully extracting key data from the Van Gogh Museum and the Vincent Van Gogh Gallery, Federica reveals the number of letters sent by Van Gogh, the number of words he wrote and the cities he wrote from. In collaboration with the Institute of Computational Linguistics “Antonio Zampolli” and ItaliaNLP Lab she also extracts the key terms and categories of words the artist used. As it turns out it was their father he discussed the most!

The result is a neat overview of the brothers’ 17-year correspondence that explores both the flow of their letter-writing and the topics and people they discussed.

The piece has featured in La Lettura, the cultural supplement in the Sunday edition of Corriere Della Sera.