Van Gogh at National Art Center Tokyo

Van Gogh: The Adventure of Becoming an Artist
National Art Center Tokyo
October 1 – December 20, 2010

This year marks the 120th anniversary of the death of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890),
and the works of this talented artist have been displayed in Japan countless times.
Nevertheless, there has yet to be a thorough introduction of how van Gogh learned his painting techniques and established his own style that earned him the nickname “The Ardent Soul.” Thanks to the unstinting support of the Van Gogh Museum and Kröller-Müller Museum with their world-renowned van Gogh collections, this exhibition will present a total of 123 works, including 36 oil paintings and 32 prints and drawings by van Gogh carefully selected from those collections and including some Japan debut works, along with 31 oil paintings, 8 prints and 16 related materials by Anton Mauve, a Den Hague School painter who helped formed the painterly expression techniques of van Gogh’s Dutch period works, and other painters he encountered in the city of arts, Paris, including Monet, Lautrec, Gauguin, and Seurat.
These works will answer the question, “how did van Gogh become van Gogh?”