Important Van Gogh exhibitions enter their final weeks

At the end of August and beginning of September 2023, four major exhibitions on Vincent van Gogh will come to an end.

Source: Metropolitan Museum / Van Gogh Museum / Stedelijk Alkmaar / Art Institute of Chicago · Image: “Wheatfield under Thunderclouds,” Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890), Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890

Ends on 27 August 2023: “Van Gogh’s Cypresses” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The approximately 40 works including in the exhibition illuminates the extent of Van Gogh’s fascination with the region’s flamelike evergreens as they successively sparked, fueled, and stoked his imagination over the course of two years in the South of France: from his initial sightings of the “tall and dark” trees in Arles to realizing their full evocative potential (“as I see them”) at the asylum in Saint-Rémy. Iconic paintings such as Wheat Field with Cypresses and The Starry Night take their place as the centerpiece of this historic exhibition, which is only presented at The Met.

Ends on 3 September 2023: “Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise. His Final Months” at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

According to the Van Gogh Museum, “in the exhibition, we follow Van Gogh from his arrival in Auvers-sur-Oise, where he optimistically and ambitiously set to work, through to his last works. By this time, feelings of failure, loneliness, and melancholy had gained the upper hand, but Van Gogh nevertheless continued to make enormously powerful works. The exhibition also explores Van Gogh’s significance as an artist at the time, and how his reputation grew in the initial years after his death.”

Ends on 4 September 2023: “Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape” at the Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute explains that “between the years 1882 and 1890, Post-Impressionist artists—such as Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand—flocked to villages on the fringes of Paris. There, they experimented with broken brushstrokes and contrasting colors to create an innovative style of painting, one that could have been established only through their collaborative efforts.”

Ends on 3 September 2023: “Van Gogh, Cézanne, Le Fauconnier & the Bergen School” at the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar

On the exhibition website, the Museum explains that the exhibition “includes a selection of original works by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne and Henri Le Fauconnier that were actually seen and studied by the ‘young guard’ of the Bergen School in the first decade of the 20th century. Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar combines the works of the three great masters with the oeuvres of Bergen School artists of the first hour: Leo Gestel, Gerrit Willem van Blaaderen, Else Berg, Mommie Schwarz, Dirk Filarski and the Wiegman brothers. The exhibition thus shows a new and nuanced picture of the birth of expressionism in the Netherlands. Van Gogh, Cézanne, Le Fauconnier & the Bergen School is thus a valuable addition to Dutch art history.”