Van Gogh Museum

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Main building of the museum
Supplementary building by the Japanese architect Kishō Kurokawa (left)

The Van Gogh Museum is an art museum on Museumplein in Amsterdam District Oud-Zuid , city district Amsterdam-Zuid . It houses the largest collection of works by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh . Since May 1, 2013, the museum has been accessible again after renovation and a temporary move to another building. In 2016, the house had 2,076,526 visitors, making it one of the most visited art museums in the world.

history

Vincent van Gogh: The Potato Eaters

When van Gogh died in 1890 at the age of 37, he left behind an extensive oeuvre with around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings. He had only sold a small amount of this and given some of the works away to friends. His younger brother, the art dealer Theo van Gogh, inherited his estate. In addition to the works of Vincent, he had also collected works by artists such as Paul Gauguin , Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Léon Lhermitte and Jean-François Millet . After Theo died a year after his brother, his widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger managed the inheritance. She returned to the Netherlands and organized the first exhibitions of Vincent van Gogh's works and made a significant contribution to making the artist known to a wider public. In 1905 the first major exhibition took place in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, while the Rijksmuseum had refused to accept loans of Van Gogh's works. Since van Gogh often painted several versions of the same subject, Johanna van Gogh was able to sell individual pictures from the collection without significantly reducing the overall impression. It was also she who promoted the publication of Vincent van Gogh's letters in several languages ​​at an early stage. After her death in 1925, her son, the engineer Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978) inherited the collection. He made works available on loan to various museums before establishing the Vincent van Gogh Foundation in 1960 and handing over the collection to it. Initially, the pictures were shown as a permanent exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam before the Van Gogh Museum opened in 1973.

In 1991 the Van Gogh Museum was the scene of a sensational art heist in which 20 paintings worth several hundred million euros were stolen. Thanks to a flat tire in the escape vehicle, the paintings were recovered by the police shortly after the robbery was discovered. In 2002, the Van Gogh paintings Stormy Seas near Scheveningen and The Reformed Church in Nuenen were stolen during a break- in ; they were found again in 2016. The paintings seized in the house of a Neapolitan drug lord could only return to Amsterdam in January 2017 with the consent of the Italian judiciary.

building

Stairwell in the museum

The museum consists of two buildings. The original construction goes back to a design by Gerrit Rietveld . After his death in 1964, the building was continued by his partners J. van Dillen and J. van Tricht and inaugurated on June 2, 1973 after completion. The permanent collection is housed in this building today. In 1999 a supplementary building for special exhibitions was inaugurated, designed by the Japanese architect Kishō Kurokawa in the shape of an ellipse. In 2015, the exhibition building was supplemented by a new, large-scale glazed entrance area, the design of which also comes from the office of Kurokawa, who died in 2007. Both buildings are connected by an underground passage.

collection

The museum also makes many of its exhibits available for download online .

The museum owns over 200 paintings by Vincent van Gogh from all creative periods and 400 of his drawings. Major works on display include The Potato Eaters , The Bedroom in Arles and a version of the Sunflowers . The museum also keeps most of Vincent van Gogh's letters. The collection also contains Van Gogh's suicide weapon, a rusted Lefaucheux à broche . The collection started by Theo van Gogh with works by other artists of the 19th century has been continuously expanded with donation funds, so that the museum today also works by Alma-Tadema , Bernard , Boulanger , Breton , Caillebotte , Courbet , Couture , Daubigny , Denis , Gauguin , Israëls , Jongkind , Manet , Mauve , Millet , Monet , Munch , Pissarro , Puvis de Chavannes , Redon , Seurat , Signac , Toulouse-Lautrec , van Dongen and von Stuck .

Exhibited works (selection)

  • Vincent van Gogh: Vegetable Gardens on Montmartre

  • Vincent van Gogh: Vincent's Bedroom

  • Vincent van Gogh: Self-Portrait in Front of Easel

  • Vincent van Gogh: Field under a stormy sky

  • Édouard Manet: The Boulogne pier

  • Claude Monet: Windmills near Zaandam

  • Paul Gauguin: Mangoes

  • Toulouse-Lautrec: Portrait of Vincent van Gogh

See also

literature

  • Hans Ibelings: Van Gogh Museum Architecture: Rietveld to Kurokawa. NAI Publishers, 1999, ISBN 90-5662-116-5 .
  • Ronald de Leeuw: Van Gogh Museum . Waanders 2005, ISBN 90-400-9928-6 .
  • John Leighton: 100 Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum. Joh. Enschedé, Amsterdam 2002, ISBN 90-6314-017-7 .

Web links

Commons : Van Gogh Museum  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Visitor Figures 2016. Art Newspaper, accessed June 11, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Der Spiegel: Picasso as hostage , February 28, 2007.
  3. ↑ CNN : Two Van Goghs stolen from museum ( Memento of the original dated November 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / articles.cnn.com archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , December 7, 2002.
  4. ↑ Art theft in Amsterdam - stolen Van Goghs resurfaced. In: Spiegel online , September 30, 2016.
  5. ↑ Two stolen Van Goghs return , Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Kulturnachrichten from January 20, 2017

Coordinates: 52 ° 21 ′ 29.7 "  N , 4 ° 52 ′ 51.8"  E