Museum news
Texas art museum mounts first exhibition of important Van Gogh paintings
The Dallas Museum of Art is partnering with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to mount the first exhibition dedicated to Vincent van Gogh’s important olive grove series, the museums announced on March 5. It will come to Dallas next year.
The series was painted during the artist's yearlong stay at the asylum of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
"Co-organized by the two institutions, 'Van Gogh and the Olive Groves' reunites for the first time the series of paintings devoted to the titular motif that the artist produced between June and December 1889," a release says. "It additionally highlights new discoveries about the artist’s techniques, materials, and palette that emerged from a collaborative conservation and scientific research project that included all 15 paintings in the series."
Co-curated by Nicole R. Myers, the DMA’s Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art, and Nienke Bakker, Senior Curator of Paintings at the Van Gogh Museum, the exhibition will debut at the Van Gogh Museum from June 25, 2021, through September 12, 2021. Then it will then travel to Dallas, where it will be on display from October 17, 2021, through February 6, 2022.
“The Van Gogh Museum is the leading authority in scholarly research into the life and work of Vincent van Gogh," says Emilie Gordenker, director of the Van Gogh Museum,"in the release. "This unique opportunity to study a complete series of paintings and dedicate a focused exhibition to it is immensely valuable for our knowledge on the artist’s oeuvre, and we are delighted to collaborate with the DMA on this important project.”
Agustín Arteaga, the DMA’s Eugene McDermott director, calls the exhibition "a fresh look at a much-beloved artist."
"Through a selection of the artist’s paintings and drawings drawn from public and private collections, Van Gogh and the Olive Groves traces Van Gogh’s evolving stylistic treatment and motivations for depicting the olive groves of Saint-Rémy over a six-month period during his stay as a self-admitted patient at the local asylum," the museums say. "This bold and experimental series, reunited for the first time in this exhibition, reveals Van Gogh’s passionate investigation of the expressive powers of color and line, and his choice of the olive groves as an evocative subject."
It also will explore Van Gogh's tendency to produce groups of paintings on specific subjects. There are 15 paintings in the series.
"These fascinating paintings clearly held an important place for Van Gogh within his oeuvre, making it that much more surprising that they had not yet been the subject of a dedicated study and exhibition,” curators Myers and Bakker say in the release. “After years of research, we are thrilled to reunite the olive grove series for the first time for audiences in Europe and the United States and to present exciting new discoveries on the paintings and artist alike.”
For more information, visit the Dallas Museum of Art website.