Vincent van Gogh

Starting in 1886, the period Vincent van Gogh spent in Paris proved to be of crucial importance to the 33-year-old artist. It was here that the autodidact who had previously tried his hand at several other professions became personally acquainted with the major figures of his time – Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, Paul Cézanne and Camille Pissarro.

In Paris, the world capital of art, van Gogh swiftly learned from his new colleagues. Within only two years of being there he had already acquired the artistic means to express his most inner feelings. It is precisely this process that is made so vividly evident by the Hamburger Kunsthalle’s exhibition of his entire output of drawings from the Paris period. Offering views of the city, of Montmartre and the country around Paris, but also studies of models, the drawings explore the world with the eyes and means of incipient modernism.
On his arrival in Paris van Gogh was still an apprentice; on leaving the city, heading south to Arles, his personal signature was fully matured. It is as if this exhibition allows us to peer over the artist’s shoulder while he is working and witness his rapid development.

Given the sensitivity of the materials involved, exhibitions of van Gogh’s drawings are exceedingly rare. This is the first time that the complete cycle of about 80 drawings from van Gogh’s stay in Paris – some in colour, some in large formats – is to be placed on public display. The exhibition will be shown only in Amsterdam and Hamburg, after which the drawings will disappear again for many years to be conserved in the vaults of the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.