“Sunflowers” is the name of two series of paintings painted by Vincent Van Gogh.
The first series, executed in Paris in 1887, represent the flowers in question on a background of a single color. In the second series executed a year later in Arles, the sunflowers are drawn inside a vase.
“ Two cut sunflowers” is part of the Paris series. The two flowers occupy all the compositional space and there isn’t any particular detail in the scene, so all our attention is paid to the two sunflowers. Van Gogh in this painting experiments with contrast and uses different colors from each other. In fact the painting is featured by the use of complementary color. The background is composed of two colors: purple and blue; while the protagonists,in the first ground, are yellow.
In all the painting of the first series the flowers are represented cut. The sunflowers are reproduced in the phases of their life, from the birth of the bud to their death in the water. Van Gogh paints them using strong brushstrokes and even marking in the canvas with the handle of the brush,giving a result of strong realism and vitality. When I went to the exhibition I read Van Gogh loved this kind of flower (like me) and was completely obsessed with it. I chose this painting also because with this the author expressed his state of mind in a different way from usual. Here the tormented Van Gogh is represented by the cut flowers but the joy and the vitality of the sunflowers yellow is a symbol of hope and life.
Viviana La Bella III H
