One of arts greatest masters comes to the National Gallery of Victoria in partnership with Art Exhibitions Australia. Van Gogh and the Seasons is a vibrant show curated by Sjraar van Heugten, former Head of Collections at the Van Gogh Museum. The show is exclusive to Melbourne and showcases the largest collection of Van Gogh works that have ever travelled to Australia, so if you’re in the area while it’s on, make sure you incorporate it into your Melbourne city tour.
Van Gogh himself is by far one of the most iconic figures in the art history world, and he enjoyed a particularly brief but well-known art career that really only spanned a little over a decade.
The exhibition will explore the artist’s connection with the seasons of nature through a display of almost 50 paintings and drawings that cover winter, spring, summer, and autumn. For Van Gogh, the seasons meant more than just weather. They represented the circle of life, spanning birth, bloom, maturity, and death in one fell swoop, and his ongoing collection of work represented all four of these themes in detail.
In much of his body of work, Van Gogh painted scenes that evoked the senses in each season – for example, you’ll spot blossoming orchards for sprint, ripe fields of wheat to represent summer, and a small, shared meal by candlelight that depicts the cold, harsh realities of winter. The show will be home to a number of key pieces that have been lent from world-famous museums across the globe, like the Van Gogh Museum, and the Kroller-Muller Museum.
The paintings are displayed in sections, each one of which is devoted to one of the four seasons. Alongside the artworks, there is additional material shown via different forms of media, including installations and sketches by other artists that relate to the four seasons.
As well as the exhibition, there will be a program of relevant talks, tours, and events taking place, as well as a number of NGV Friday Nights programs that feature live music, food, and special performances. The show will take place between the 28th April and the 9thJuly as part of the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series at the National Gallery of Victoria on St Kilda Road, Melbourne.
If you’re a Van Gogh lover, or simply want to explore some works by one of the most prolific artists of all time, check out the exhibition and its series of side programs and installations.
