Van Gogh’s Undergrowth with Two Figures – 1000-Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

Van Gogh’s Undergrowth with Two Figures is a painting by Vincent Van Gogh and is housed in the Cincinnati Art Museum, United States of America.

The painting was created in 1890 and represents further proof of how much the artist was linked to the Impressionist school, which favored the creation of nature scenes using the en plein air technique .

In the center of the painting, a couple is surrounded by lush flora mixed with trees that fill the entire canvas. Everything the artist captured on canvas was then brought back to the studio, where he corrected elements or added effects. In this work, we see the fusion of Impressionist and Van Gogh techniques, recognizable above all by the brushstrokes that dominate so many of his other famous works. There isn’t much evidence to identify the two figures seen in the work, but from the clothes they wear, they strongly resemble those of Parisians during the holidays. On these occasions, people used to take walks in the parks.

In Van Gogh’s view, art requires complete dedication, which becomes a radical lifestyle choice: his refusal to constrain himself by ordinary work can be understood precisely as the artist’s desire to free himself from social obligations and devote himself entirely to painting, a goal he was able to achieve thanks to the financial support of Theo, who understood the great artist his brother was—a human and cultural partnership that proved to be enormously important. He didn’t empathize with nature; he empathized with nature itself; he forced it to bend, to shape itself according to the forms of his thought, to follow him in his stylistic flourishes. And everything, beneath the brush of this bizarre and powerful creator, comes alive with a mysterious life, independent of the very thing he paints, which is within him and which is him.

Van Gogh spent thirty years preparing for painting; what he sensed came true. Starting from Impressionism, drawing on the lessons of the East in his use of arabesque drawing and exquisite color, he reconnected with the Romantic movement, but surpassed it with the exaggerated intensity of his vision. He did not sever ties with Naturalism, but went beyond it; his magnificent hallucinations, which in no way or at any time prelude to abstract art, paved the way for Expressionism. He was its first founder, or, as some say, its greatest culprit. His brushstrokes did not outline, but rather highlighted a powerful element in the subject; his dazzling, sun-drenched color, which almost only found shadows in the creases of his brushstrokes. And all this would have a profound influence on the painters of the following generation.