Van Gogh Up Close, a major exhibition organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Canada, presents a group of the artist’s most daring and innovative works that dramatically altered the course of modern painting. The exhibit will run from February 1 — May 6, 2012, and Philadelphia is the only U.S. venue for this major traveling exhibition.
Made between 1886 and 1890 in Paris, Arles, Saint-Rémy, and Auvers, the works in the exhibition concentrate on an important and previously overlooked aspect of van Gogh’s work: fine details or “close-ups,” that bring familiar subjects such as landscape elements, still lifes, and flowers into the extreme foreground of the composition or focus on them in ways that are entirely unexpected and without precedent. The exhibition includes more than 40 landscapes and still lifes, which have not been seen together or identified as critical to our understanding of van Gogh’s artistic achievement.
Tickets are available at www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/743.html.