International Art News

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890). Self-portrait with Straw Hat, 1887. Oil on cardboard. 40.8 x 32.7 cm (16 1/16 x 12 7/8 in.). © Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Until January 20, 2013 – Denver Art Museum
An in-depth exploration of Vincent van Gogh’s unconventional path to becoming one of the world’s most recognizable artists, Becoming Van Gogh examines critical steps in his artistic evolution through more than 70 paintings and drawings by Van Gogh, along with works by artists to whom he responded such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Camille Pissarro. Becoming Van Gogh brings together loans from more than 60 public and private collections throughout Europe and North America to tell the story of a number of key formative periods throughout the artist’s career.

Denver Art Museum

Sunflowers - Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

From 29 September 2012 to 25 April 2013
During its temporary stay in the Hermitage Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum will present works by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) from its permanent collection in a completely new way. In this display of some 75 paintings, selected letters, objects and works on paper, visitors will follow Vincent van Gogh on a personal quest into the heart of his artistic identity. The themes that the artist himself identified as central to his development will form the basis of the presentation Vincent: The Van Gogh Museum in the Hermitage Amsterdam.

Vincent's House in Arles or The Yellow House painted by Vincent van Gogh, 1888. Oil on canvas. 72x91.5cm.

During this seven-month renovation, most of the works by Van Gogh in the museum’s collection will be on display at the Hermitage Amsterdam. Many major paintings will be included, such as Sunflowers, The bedroom, Almond blossom, The potato eaters and The yellow house, in surprising combinations of early and late works. Van Gogh’s most famous and best loved paintings will be shown side by side with lesser known works in closely integrated thematic pairings.

Vincent van Gogh - The potato eaters 1885 Oil on canvas - 82 cm × 114 cm (32.3 in × 44.9 in)Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Hermitage Amsterdam

Vincent van Gogh Iris, 1889 Oil on thinned cardboard, mounted on canvas 62.2 × 48.3 cm National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

From May 25 to September 3, 2012 – National Gallery of Canada
Van Gogh: Up Close is the first major exhibition in Canada in over 25 years of works by this famous Dutch artist. It brings together more than 40 of Van Gogh’s paintings from private and public collections around the world, as well as a selection of Japanese woodblock prints, nineteenth-century photographs, and works on paper from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

This exhibition explores Van Gogh’s love for nature and his gift for representing the world around him, from landscapes down to the smallest blade of grass.

Vincent van Gogh View of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer , 1888 Oil on canvas, 64.2 × 53 cm Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands Photo © Stichting Kröller-Müller Museum

For example, the show includes Iris (1889), from the National Gallery of Canada’s collection, as well as paintings that depict another corner of the garden where Van Gogh painted Iris, but from a wider angle. Van Gogh: Up Close will demonstrate how these paintings became the most radical and innovative in the artist’s body of work.

In early 1886 Van Gogh arrived in Paris from the Netherlands and came face to face with a revolutionary new way of painting. For the first time he was exposed to the art of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, which compelled him to revise his painting in both content and style. He quickly abandoned the sombre hues of his earlier Dutch works in favour of a brighter palette and modernized brushstroke, beginning with a series of flower still lifes painted in a typical 19th century Western style. But Van Gogh swiftly departed from this tradition and focused increasingly on the subject itself, eliminating the surrounding space.

Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers, 1887 Kunstmuseum Bern Gift of Prof. Hans R. Hahnloser, Bern

At the same time, Van Gogh developed a keen interest in Japanese woodblock prints, which he admired for their aesthetic qualities. Like the Impressionist painters who had discovered these prints earlier, Van Gogh became fascinated with Japanese art. This led him to experiment with unusual visual angles, decorative use of colour, cropping and flattening of his compositions.

Vincent van Gogh Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio Bequest of Mary E. Johnston Image: The Bridgeman Art Library

Often remembered for his battles with mental illness and suicide in July 1890, Van Gogh was first and foremost an ambitious, well-read and sophisticated thinker whose work was informed and deliberate.

Born in 1853, he was fluent in English, French and Dutch, and he had a great love for the written word. Throughout his life he read a vast amount of literature that stretched from the Bible to French Naturalist writings. Vincent Van Gogh also had a strong understanding of art history that extended from Old Master paintings right up to the emergence of photography.

National Gallery of Canada Hours

Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Until the 26th of September 2010 – Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Established in 1876, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has close to a quarter of a million historically significant works of art, including paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Chinese porcelain, architectural installations, and contemporary artworks. An American landmark, the museum possesses magnificent impressionist and post impressionist collections, as well as celebrated collections of artworks by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and American painters. The museum has an extremely enlightened and creative approach towards art historical research and its dazzling curatorial concepts have reaped the museum the opportunity to organize the United States Pavilion of the Venice Biennale two times. This exhibition marks the first time the Taipei Fine Art Museum is cooperating with a major American museum and is a rare opportunity. Focusing on the development of the Philadelphia Museum of Art collection, the exhibition offers viewers a glimpse of American philanthropic patterns and museum collecting style. The exhibition is a veritable feast including sixty paintings and sculptures by the legendary artists Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Amedeo Modigliani, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Museum Hours

Paul Gauguin - Leda en de zwaan, 1889

Van Gogh Museum – Until the  6th of June 2010
In 1889, during the Paris World’s Fair, Paul Gauguin and several friends exhibited their work on the festival site of the Café des Arts, owned by a certain monsieur Volpini. Among other works, Gauguin’s show included a series of prints he had made at the instigation of Theo van Gogh as a way of drawing attention to his paintings. This series of prints became known as the Volpini suite.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Volpini Suite: Design for a plate: Leda and the swan, 1889, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh FoundationThese 11 zincographs on brilliant, canary-yellow paper were created at a crucial point in Gauguin’s oeuvre and offer an overview of the central themes in his work, from the exotic landscapes of Martinique to scenes of Pont-Aven and Arles. With the Volpini suite Gauguin effectively presented his calling card as an artist.

Paul Gauguin: The breakthrough into modernity is the first to examine in depth this series of lithographs, which played such a crucial role in Gauguin’s development into a modern artist. The exhibition will also show works by Gauguin and his friends like Charles Laval, Emile Bernard and Louis Anquetin closely linked to the Volpini suite.

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Breton girls dancing, 1888, National Gallery of Art, Washington (collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon)Altogether there will be some 60 works of art (paintings, works on paper, sculptures and ceramics) on view, including key pieces such as Be mysterious (Musée d’Orsay), Breton girls dancing  (National Gallery of Art, Washington), Self-portrait (Pushkin Museum, Moscow) and Is there news (Gemälde galerie Neue Meister, Dresden). The recent acquisition of the Van Gogh Museum, Breton girl spinning will also be on show.

Café des Arts and the Pont-Aven School
In the rebel tradition of Gustave Courbet and Eduard Manet, Gauguin and his friends had organized their own exhibition as a counterpart to the established art being shown at the Paris World’s Fair in the Café des Arts. This L’Exposition de Peintures du Groupe Impressioniste et Synthétiste was the first joint presentation by a group of artists who were to become known as the Pont-Aven School. They had rejected Impressionism and Realism in favour of Synthetism, a style characterised by a simplification of form and colour into flat, rhythmic patterns and undulating lines. This new movement became a major source of inspiration for Les Nabis, a group of avant-garde artists working in Paris in the period 1890-1905, and other artists.

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