Self portrait (1889) was the last of the self-portraits he painted while in the Saint-Rémy asylum, where he willingly went in May 1889. Five months earlier he had argued with painter and friend Paul Gauguin and injured his own ear. His paintings at this stage show a concern with movement, expressed in continuous and undulating curves. Again, however, color has a life of its own and often independent of the forms painted by the artist. This is what happens in this painting that brings a background covered in blue and green spirals with the artist's clothes merging into it. Although blue and green appear quite often in his works, the colors were not chosen by chance: the sum of the background tones coupled with the curves in the wall form a tense image that conveys the painter's mental confusion. His face stands out for the red beard, the strained features and the stare that suggest introspection, as if he was so focused on his own thoughts that he “forgot” his gaze in any direction.
