AMSTERDAM — Stars swirling in a deep blue night, aureate sunflowers, sun-choked fields of wheat — Vincent van Gogh loved to capture light and all of its transforming properties. Yet light is also the enemy of more than half the artist’s works, those that can fade, turn yellow or become brittle if exposed to it for too long.

While van Gogh produced more than 800 works on canvas throughout his 10-year career, he made at least as many works on paper, in pen and ink, pencil, diluted oil paint and watercolor, said Marije Vellekoop, head of collections, research and presentations at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Because of their sensitivity and fragility, though, this part of van Gogh’s oeuvre rarely sees the light of day.

“The general rule in the paper world is that you show them once every three to five years and then only for three to four months,” Mrs. Vellekoop said. “Then they go in the box and they stay there for several years.”

Eighteen van Gogh works on paper will come out of their boxes this month for the exhibition “Van Gogh’s Drawings” at The European Fine Art Fair, known as Tefaf, in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Among them is one of only two known drawn self-portraits, an exterior view of the famous “Yellow House” in the French city of Arles and a landscape that the artist completed in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, a few months before he committed suicide there.