Self-Portrait, 1889, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
#7. Van Gogh and Expressionism
Neue Galerie, New York City
Van Gogh's work was first seen in Germany and Austria in a series of
shows that began around 1900, 10 years after his death. Within another
decade he would become the force that ignited German Expressionism.
Painters like Schiele, Klimt, Kirchner and Nolde responded not only to
his formal qualities — the blunt impasto, the fearless juxtapositions of
impossibly vivid colors — but to his conviction that painting could be
the channel through which powerful feeling could find equivalent form.
Kafka once wrote that, "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within
us." For the artists in this enlightening, well focused and powerful
show, Van Gogh was an axe.