In what looks to arrive as Houston's blockbuster visual art event of 2019, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston just announced they will present a major new Vincent van Gogh survey to open next spring. Featuring portraits, landscapes, and still lifes “Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art” will do more than present some of the artist’s greatest masterpieces but will also tell Van Gogh’s life story through his work.
The exclusive exhibition will be a major collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo (which, together, hold the largest collections in the world of Van Gogh’s work) and will include some 50 seldom-loaned paintings and drawings from throughout the decade of Van Gogh’s career.
“This exhibition will offer visitors a vivid portrait of Van Gogh’s evolution as an artist,” describes MFAH Director Gary Tinterow in a statement. “We are grateful to the Van Gogh and Kröller-Müller Museums for lending so many of these rarely traveled masterworks from their collections for this exclusive presentation here in Houston.”
With a rich focus on Van Gogh’s life rather than just his death, the exhibition will also give insights into the places of Van Gogh’s life. “Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art” will allow MFAH visitors to meet a young Van Gogh as a learning artist in the Dutch village of Nuenen, follow him to Paris where he would be inspired by fellow artists and vibrant city life and travel with him to the countryside, back to nature, where we’ll discover the Van Gogh of bright colors that we love so well.
“The popular story of van Gogh has tended to focus on his last few years and his death,” says David Bomford, curator of the exhibition. “But there is a rich and complex narrative that starts much earlier, one that is defined by Van Gogh’s tremendous drive to become an artist.”
To paint a more detailed and intricate portrait of the mind and genius of Van Gogh the exhibition will also include facsimiles of Van Gogh’s letters throughout the galleries.
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“Vincent van Gogh: His Life in Art”will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet St., from March 10 to June 27, 2019.
Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, March–June 1887, oil on cardboard, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).
