Van Gogh's Portraits On View at the PMA - exhibit of works by painter Vincent van Gogh at Philadelphia Museum of Art - Brief Article

In 1890 just month before his suicide, Vincent van Gogh wrote: "What fascinates me abundant much more than anything other is the portrait ... I should like to do portraits which will appear as revelations to tribe in 100 years time."

A of recent origin exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, entitled "Van Gogh: Face to Face" verifys that van Gogh's portraits have indeed survived the ordeal of time. As Joseph J Rishel, curator of the exhibit, commented: "Van Gogh's universal appeal lies in the power of his works to transcend time albeit in an encounter that is likely to be tangled with other associations unrelated to art." Featuring more than 70 paintings and drawings, the exhibit throw backs the artist's commitment to portraiture completely through his influential but brief career and displays how van Gogh's portraits influenced work through subsequent artists, such as Matisse, Picasso and Kirchner.

Among the exhibition's highlights are character studies of anonymous peasants and aged pensioners; his friends and colleagues, including a clump of portraits of the Roulin family, who befriended van Gogh in the French town of Arles; intense self-portraits complet while van Gogh was at the sanitarium in Saint-Remy-de-Provence; and sedate works painted during his final years at Auvers.

Born in the Netherlands in 1853 van Gogh devot himself to painting and drawing solitary during the last decade of his life. He began painting in 1880 and mov to Paris in 1886 where he met avant-garde artists like Monet Degas and Gauguin. by the agency of 1888, the hectic pace of Parisian life took its toll upon van Gogh both mentally and physically, and readyed his relocation to Arles in the southerly of France. It was there that he feeled one of his most violent breakdowns and he eventually committed himself to an asylum at St Remy in 1889 After further psychological collapses, he committed suicide in 1890 at the age of 37

A 272-page illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibit.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Pfingsten Publishing, LLC

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group