Displaying items by tag: art insitute of chicago

An exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has reunited two versions of Vincent Van Gogh’s painting The Bedroom for the first time in years. The Van Gogh Museum owns the first version of the work and the second iteration is on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago; the latter has not been on view in Europe since 1990.

The presentation of the two paintings is the centerpiece of the second part of the exhibition Van Gogh at Work. The show, which commemorates the 40^th anniversary of the Van Gogh Museum, will be on view through January 12, 2014. The Van Gogh Museum’s version of the painting was created in the artist’s bedroom in the Yellow House in Arles after weeks of continuous work. Pleased with the final result, Van Gogh wrote a letter to his brother, Theo, outlining why he was so fond of the work. The Art Institute’s version of the painting was produced less than a year later while Van Gogh was staying in the Saint-Remy asylum. He asked Theo to send him the first painting so that he could make a second version of it. While the two paintings are undeniably similar, they exhibit subtle differences in color and the way Van Gogh painted the details of the composition.

The second portion of Van Gogh at Work will include several changes besides the introduction of the Art Institute of Chicago’s version of The Bedroom. The exhibition’s works on paper will be exchanged for other works on paper as they are sensitive to light and can only be on view for a limited amount of time. Recent loans that have just been added to the show’s line up include The Drinkers (After Daumier) from the Art Institute of Chicago and Lawn with Weeping Tree from a private collection.

An exhibition organized in collaboration with Houston’s Menil Collection and the Art Institute of Chicago will open on September 28, 2013 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Magritte the Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 is the first exhibition to focus on the pioneering Surrealist artist René Magritte’s formative years.

Beginning in 1926, Magritte embarked on a quest to “challenge the real world,” which concluded in 1938, just before the outbreak of World War II. Featuring 80 works including paintings, collages, and objects, the exhibition touches on the varying concepts Magritte explored during this time including displacement, transformation, metamorphosis, and representation.

The exhibition, which will be on view through January 12, 2014, will also include a selection of photographs, periodicals, and a number of Magritte’s early commercial works in an effort to convey the artist’s budding identity.