Vincent van Gogh’s masterpieces have arrived in Seoul, offering a journey through the artist’s 10-year career. The exhibition “The Great Passion: Van Gogh” at Seoul Arts Center’s Hangaram Art Museum marks the Dutch Postimpressionist’s largest exhibition in the city by number of works.
The exhibition showcases 76 oil paintings and drawings from the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, which holds the second-largest collection of Van Gogh’s works after the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The exhibition unfolds across five sections -- “The Dutch Period,” “The Paris Period,” “The Arles Period,” “The Saint-Remy Period” and “The Auvers-sur-Oise Period” -- illustrating the painter’s artistic evolution over a decade.
Van Gogh, born in 1853 in Zundert, Netherlands, became a painter at the age of 27 in 1880 after working as an art dealer for seven years and as a priest for four.
The artist had a close relationship with his brother Theo, to whom he expressed his determination to become an artist in a letter from 1881, stating: “It seems to me that I am now gradually able to do things that I did not think possible,” as highlighted in the exhibition.
Among the works on display is “Liberty Leading the People,” a copy of Eugene Delacroix’s masterpiece, which Van Gogh completed while battling illness at a mental hospital.
In addition to his oil paintings, featuring his distinctive strong and thick brushstrokes, the exhibition includes several drawings from his Dutch period (1881-1885), which laid the groundwork for his Parisian period, where he discovered the transformative use of light in his paintings.
Van Gogh left behind around 900 paintings created over his 10-year career as an artist before his death at the age of 37.
The exhibition runs through March 16 at Seoul Arts Center’s Hangaram Art Museum, which is closed on Mondays.
