Curators' Introduction Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller's Neo-Impressionists

Useful lecture at the National Gallery introducing their exhibition of Neo-Impressionist works from the collection of Helene Kröller-Müller.

The co-curators of the show, Christopher Riopelle, curator of post 1800 works at the gallery, and Julien Domercq, formerly of the gallery and now at the Royal Academy, talked us through the story of the collection and the context of the works in it.

They explained how Helene Kröller-Müller started collecting in the early 20th century aided by the painter and architect, Henry van de Velde and how the design for the exhibition references the museums he built for her. She was also a collector of Van Gogh's and owned 90 of his paintings but started collecting the works of the Neo-Impressionists, which we might think of as Pointillists, and how she thought of the collections as the yin and yang of art, one full of passion and one calm and serene.

They talked us though a simplified explanation of the colour wheel and how these artists placed spots or slashes of contrasting colours together. They also looked at how the movement spread through Europe, particularly to Brussels.

The show includes 36 works from Kröller-Müller's collection alongside other works by the artists she collected such as Signac and Seurat. The only artist in the show not collected by her is Anna Boch, picked so they could broaden the display.

I went from the talk straight into the exhibition so it was fresh in my mind as I looked at the works.

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