Matteo Massagrande

Olive trees, lavender, thyme

"...On the other hand the olive trees are very characteristic, and I’m struggling to capture that. It’s silver, sometimes more blue, sometimes greenish bronzed, whitening on ground that is yellow, pink, purplish or orangeish to dull red ochre. But very difficult, very difficult. But that suits me and attracts me to work fully in gold or silver."

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Location: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
Date: Saturday 28 September 1889
806 | Br. 1990: 807 | CL: 608

"...Then the hills here, full of thyme and other aromatic plants, are very beautiful, and because of the clarity of the air one can see from the heights so much further than at home."

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Anna van Gogh-Carbentus
Location: Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
Date: between Monday 8 and Friday 12 July 1889
788 | Br. 1990: 787 | CL: 598

United Kingdom

London

Pontone Gallery

Painting

Ulivi, lavanda, timo

Amsterdam

"...Was at the early service this morning (Noorderkerk), afterwards walked around town a bit, the canals are especially beautiful now that the leaves on the trees have the colours of autumn, and then went to the English church."

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Location: Amsterdam
Date: Sunday 21 October 1877
132 | Br. 1990: 131 | CL: 111

Amsterdam

The corner of the garden

"...Here’s a new subject. A corner of a garden with round bushes and a weeping tree, and in the background, clumps of oleanders."

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Location: Arles
Date: Thursday 5 July 1888
636 | Br. 1990: 639 | CL: 508

L'angolo del giardino

The grapevine in the orchard

"...Here in the garden, sheltered from the wind, 
Where no flower bloomed, all cabbage-beds and overhanging vines."

(excerpt from “La Sœur novice” by François Coppée, 1872)

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Anthon van Rappard
Location: Nuenen
Date: on or about Sunday 2 March 1884
433 | Br. 1990: 435 | CL: R41

La vigna nell'orto

The courtyard of the lunatic asylum

"...A view of the garden of the asylum where I am, on the right a grey terrace, a section of house, some rosebushes that have lost their flowers; on the left, the earth of the garden — red ochre — earth burnt by the sun, covered in fallen pine twigs."

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Emile Bernard
Location: Arles
Date: on or about Tuesday 26 November 1889
822 | Br. 1990: 824 | CL: B21

Il cortile del manicomio

Orchard in bloom

"...I’ve just done a clump of apricot trees in a little fresh green orchard."

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Location: Arles
Date: on or about Sunday 25 March 1888
589 | Br. 1990: 591 | CL: 471

Frutteto in fiore

Apple tree in winter

"...They’re such nice people, met them recently at a lecture and they stood out from the others in the audience just like an old, moss-covered apple tree."

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Location: Amsterdam
Date: Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 November 1877
135 | Br. 1990: 134 | CL: 114

Melo d'inverno

The Mine and the Trees

"...Nearby, the large, sombre buildings of the Marcasse mine, standing alone and set apart on the flat field, which that night, during the violent rains, truly reminded one of the hulk of Noah’s ark, as it would have appeared in the darkness of the Flood by the light of a lightning flash."

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Location: Wasmes
Date: on or about Thursday 19 June 1879
152 | Br. 1990: 151 | CL: 130

Gli alberi e la miniera

Pine Forest

"...The great difficulty there was to keep it clear and bring in space between the treetrunks, which stand at different distances — and the place and relative thickness of the trunks altered by the perspective. To ensure, in short, that one can breathe and wander about in it — and smell the woods."

From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Location: The Hague
Date: Sunday 20 August 1882
258 | Br. 1990: 260 | CL: 227

Pineta

Pontone Gallery is proud to present this important new show by distinguished Italian painter Matteo Massagrande. He has produced a suite of paintings inspired by Van Gogh; in particular certain passages from letters he wrote to his brother, Theo. Earlier this year these works were exhibited at ‘Attorno a Van Gogh,’ which ran alongside the major exhibition ‘Van Gogh. I Colori Della Vita,’ put together by eminent curator Marco Goldin. He sought Massagrande’s involvement and set in train the development of these nine paintings.

Massagrande combs Van Gogh’s correspondence for descriptions of landscape that resonate with his own emotional response to place. Vincent’s are forensically pictorial, describing qualities of light and colour and the specific nature and appearance of trees, flowers and topography. Massagrande finds equivalents in his own archive of personally significant motif. He works up compositions of landmark and place that he knows and loves, that are special and evocative and have formal qualities in common with those of Van Gogh. There are lots of quite startling correlations: Massagrande’s painting ‘La vigna nell’orto’, for example, is an almost literal interpretation of an extract from a poem that Van Gogh enclosed in a letter dated March 1884: “here in the garden, sheltered from the wind / Where no flower bloomed, all cabbage beds and overhanging vines.”

As ever with this painter, the method is thorough and rigorous. His exemplary draughtsmanship sets out a spatially coherent template onto which he hangs the subtleties of tone and colour in optically-analytical dabs and patches, which coalesce into sumptuously realised materiality. We do not see him paint like Van Gogh. This is no pastiche, but a hardwon technique and a relentless process which demonstrates its own profound integrity. His painstaking means effect an expressive end.

The tree is ubiquitous, a recurring image that is insistently emphatic. For both artists it is a carrier of meaning. Massagrande writes of his love for trees and the common bond he shares with Van Gogh. For Massagrande they are a spur to memory, their growth and decay analogous to our own, their endurance in contrast to our transience. He takes joy in the independent existence of the tree, its life force and patient, fertile resilience. If there is a touchstone for this exhibition it is ‘Gli alberi e la miniera’, which shows young saplings bursting out of the floor of a derelict building, a response to Van Gogh’s painting of the Marcasse mine in the Borinage, Belgium, where he found his true vocation as a painter. It is a picture of fecundity and transformation.

This is a sequence of lyrical paintings, suffused with personal associations, heavy with emotional weight and attachment. They are the result of Massagrande’s quest to see alongside Van Gogh, to accompany him on his painterly expeditions. He sets up a dialogue with the great painter to understand and experience his sensibility and get closer to his spirit. The enterprise bears fruit and brings new insight into Massagrande’s subject matter. It seems that walking in step with Van Gogh leads Massagrande to discover new and rewarding paths of artistic enquiry.

Matteo Massagrande | The Mine and the Trees

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