The NGV’s next Winter Masterpieces exhibition will be Van Gogh and the Seasons, opening April 28 2017. Today, the NGV announced the exhibition by unveiling a five metre-tall re-creation of a Van Gogh still life artwork made entirely from flowers; a fitting tribute considering the deep resonance that all aspects of nature had for the Dutch artist.
Like the NGV’s current Degas exhibition, Van Gogh and the Seasons will be curated by an international expert on the artist; this time Sjraar van Heugten, former head of collections at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The exhibition will comprise more than 60 works,
Chances are, the majority of Van Gogh’s post-impressionist paintings that you know and love depict nature: from ‘Wheat Field with Cypresses’ (above) to ‘Still Life: Vase with Fourteen Sunflowers’ to ‘The Starry Night’. As such the exhibition will be presented as a journey through the four seasons. It will also explore the circle of life - birth, bloom, maturity and death - that he so often represented in his dramatic, expressive and colourful works, which he continued to create until his death by suicide at at Auvers-sur-Oise in the south of France in 1890.
Van Gogh and the Seasons will run from Apr 28-Jul 9, 2017.
The NGV has also unveiled a number of major upcoming exhibitions. In December this year, the gallery will present Who’s Afraid of Colour (Dec 16 2016-Apr 2 2017) which will bring together a number of significant contemporary female Indigenous artists in a major group exhibition. The work of artists including Julie Gough, Destiny Deacon, Emily Kam Kngwarray, Queen McKenzie and Nonggirrnga Marawili will be explored in depth.
In March next year, the NGV Festival of Photography will feature a diverse range of Australian photographers including Zoe Croggon, Bill Henson and Ross Coulter.
For the full list of exhibitions, visit the NGV website.