Kunsthalle Mannheim / Cem Yücetas
)Hector-Bau > Ebene 1 > Kubus 1
Intro
Van Gogh painted this still life during one of his crucial transitional phases. Between 1886 and 1888 he spent two decisive years in Paris, which initiated a change in his working method, especially his understanding of color effect. Schooled in the work of the French Romanticist Eugène Delacroix, his colors lighten during this period and he begins to experiment with extreme contrasts.
In »Roses and Sunflowers«, one of more than 30 still lifes he produced in Paris, this complementary contrast is created using red and green. The two colors shape the picture and generate a tangible dynamism. The yellow petals of the sunflowers, so important to Van Gogh, are depicted using a pastose application of color. The resulting relief-like structure gives them plasticity and the color gains in expressive power. Van Gogh thus translates the vitality of the real bunch of flowers into the vibrating radiance of his still life.
Kunsthalle Mannheim
Transkription
We see a brass pot filled with an opulent bouquet of multi-petalled roses, herbaceous white and pink blossoms, and half-withered sunflowers. This bouquet was painted in 1886 by Vincent van Gogh in Paris: „I have no money to pay for models, I would have wholly given myself up to figure painting otherwise; but I did do some color studies of simple flowers.“
The expression SOME color studies is quite an understatement: van Gogh painted more than thirty still lifes. What did this 33-year old Dutchman from North Brabant province search for? New, unknown color effects, richness of contrast, brightness! Vitality!!!
„Last year I painted almost nothing but flowers to achieve color tones other than grey, which means pink, soft or strong green, light blue, purple, yellow, orange, culminating in beautiful red.“
Beautiful red! Van Gogh used it for the background here: While on the left a traditional auburn color frames the bouquet, rendering the plants limp and lifeless, the right-hand side of the painting is composed of shimmering red and pink tints. Using broad brushstrokes, van Gogh overlays them on greenish gray. In front of this background, the brittle white, beige and orange of the blossoms becomes radiant. The artist enhances this effect by using green as a complementary color. On the tabletop or table cloth, he has warm reds collide with various shades of green.
„[I] was searching for a juxtaposition of blue with orange, red, green, yellow, and violet, I was searching for broken or neutral tints to counterbalance excessive contrasts. I try to reproduce intense colors, not to achieve grey harmonies.“
By applying the oil paint for the blossoms in a way to achieve a relief-like structure of the colors on the primed background, he sets off the blossoms from their highly contrasting surroundings: Van Gogh is on his way to achieve that style of painting which will bring worldwide fame to his artwork.