Presentation of la Mirada de Vincent at the Van Gogh Museum

The culminating point in our presentation, in Amsterdam, of La Mirada de Vincent –a limited, numbered edition of 2,998 copies– was the presenting of a copy to Adriaan Dönszelmann, Director of the Van Gogh Museum. 

The date set for the event was 26th June 2015, only a month before the official commemoration day for the 125th anniversary of the death of Vincent van Gogh. In this special year, Artika wanted to lend its voice to the commemoration events, and to remember one of the most important artists in the world of contemporary art by producing a unique work which shows the Dutch painter’s most private side –his drawings and sketches. Because before he became a painter, Van Gogh considered himself to be a draughtsman. Wherever he went, he took his sketchbooks, which he used as if they were notebooks– for noting down ideas and especially for making sketches of the things he saw and experienced. 

Several national media organs of a general nature and various quality specialist magazines attended and covered the event organised by Artika, and located in the most perfect venue that Van Gogh could have wished for, surrounded by his pictorial works and his artistic legacy. Among these are the artist’s original sketchbooks, which are usually locked away in the museum’s safe, but which were brought out for the purpose of devising and designing the book La mirada de Vincent. 

During the presentation, the speakers stressed the fact that the essence of this work lies in the sketchbooks, seven of them in all, which contain the artist’s drawings from 1873 to 1890. There are three from his earliest days of sketching; these possess more of a didactic purpose than an artistic one, as that they contain the drawings Van Gogh made for a four-year-old girl. The other four, meanwhile, describe a journey in time and space through the towns and cities that were the backdrop to his creativity (Nuenen, Amberes, Paris and Auvers). Furthermore, the work includes 17 plates, all taken from sketchbooks that did not survive intact, but which possess great artistic value thanks to the predominance of colour in the images. 

Juan Ribalta, the Director of Artika, noted that this was the second work that the company had produced in conjunction with the Van Gogh Museum, and that it was thanks to the success of the first project, as well as the excellent relations between the two organisations, that this second project was possible. As he also noted during the presentation, the artist’s drawings reveal the way his paintings evolved, as many of these sketches represent precursors to, or studies for later paintings. This is a unique edition, specially designed to pay homage to one of the great names of art, a man whose magic can be easily perceived and understood to be the work of a genius.