The Most Popular Museum in the Netherlands - the Van Gogh Museum

One of 15 paintings by Van Gogh of olive groves on special exhibition

The Kurokawa Wing of the Van Gogh Museum - main entrance and special exhibitions

Sunday, April 24, 2022

The Van Gogh Museum is the most visited museum in the Netherlands with more than 2.3 million visitors each year.  We were so glad to be among them.  The museum, completed in 1973, consists of two structures.  The Kurokawa Wing is rounded with large curved walls of glass and serves as the main entrance and location of special exhibitions.

The Reitveld building holds the main collection and is 4 stories high.  There are more than 200 of Van Gogh's paintings, 400 drawings and 700 letters.  The collection contains nine self portraits and also shows art pieces of his contemporaries.

The Reitveld building of the Van Gogh museum

Michael wallking between the two interesting wings of the museum

Entrance to the museum - glass atrium wall brings in the natural beauty

When Vincent Van Gogh died in 1890, his collection of unsold work went to his brother Theo.  Theo died six months later, and his widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger managed the remainder of the collection.  Her son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, transferred the collection to a state foundation, and this is the basis for the current holdings of the museum today.  In the 1960's the government decided to build a  free standing museum to  display Van Gogh's works.

One of Vincent Van Gogh's many self portraits

"The Potato Eaters" (1885) - stark and brutal in its realism

"Wheatfield and Crows" (1890) - one of my personal favorites

The museum was hosting a special exhibition of Van Gogh and the Olive Groves.  They brought together 15 paintings made by Van Gogh when he was in southern France, after being institutionalized for psychiatric symptoms.  

According to the catalog, "Vincent was 36 when he plunged into painting olive groves in the South of France.  He saw many olive trees around the asylum where he stayed for a year.  The gnarly shapes of the trees reflected Vincent's artistic and mental journey.

"Van Gogh vent through a mentally difficult time in the institution.  Outdoors, surrounded by nature, he found comfort and strength.  He wanted to express that feeling in this olive grove paintings."

"Van Gogh made fifteen paintings of olive groves, constantly experimenting with various approaches.  Fascinated by the gnarly shapes of the olive trees and their ever-changing colors, he painted them over and over.  He painted at different times of the day and used colors inspired by the season.  Vincent himself considered his paintings of olive trees to number among the best he had made in the South of France.

"This exhibition reunited Van Gogh's paintings of olive groves and exhibits them together for the first time, thanks to unique loans from museums in Europe and the United States."