Having just spent just over a week in New York, one of my favourite cities. I managed to visit both the Met and the Guggenheim. Having always been extremely interested in fine art I was lucky enough to visit one of the largest exhibitions of Vincent Van Gogh I’ve seen.
The exhibition called ‘Cypresses’ described as a “groundbreaking” exhibit of around forty works including many famous paintings and sketches also included was several pieces of work which had never been shown to the public before. The exhibition focused Vincents love of these majestic trees beginning with paintings and sketches from Arles in the south of France, where his imagination began to be preoccupied with cypresses and ending after a two year study of this subject with paintings during his stay in the Saint – Rémy asylum which brought his exploration of his subject full circle.
I also managed to re-visit the Guggenheim whose main exhibition was by the German artist Gertrud Goldshmidt also known as “Gego” (B- 1912 – D-1994).
The exhibition was called ‘Measuring Infinity’ and was shown around the five floors of the Guggenheim’s rotunda which included nearly two hundred pieces of work from the early 1950’s to the 1990’s including drawings, sculptures, textiles, prints and some of Gego’s sketch books which I could have spent days looking over.
Alone some of her sculptural pieces can look “spindly” and slight odd but when shown together as one larger installation they manage to create something quite wonderful and somehow manages to transport you into another magical and almost earie world.
Overall, an excellent couple of days at both venues.
