Van Gogh & company.

• Position: Museums Today - Van Gogh to Mondrian: Modern Art from the Kroller-Muller Museum - Ensemble of paintings created by Helene Kroller-Muller

WITH A SIGNIFICANT group of some 20 paintings and drawings by Vincent van Gogh as its core, the exhibition "Van Gogh to Mondrian: Modern Art from the Kroller-Muller Museum" tells the fascinating story of perhaps the 20th century's greatest patron of modern art, architecture, and design. One of the most important promoters of modernism in Holland, Helene Kroller-Muller created a remarkable ensemble of paintings by the most significant figures of the early modern period, including Fernand Leger, Pier Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Georges Seurat, and van Gogh. Working with leading Dutch modernist artists and architects in the 1910s and 1920s, Kroller-Muller and her husband, Anion, envisioned a museum where the public could enjoy and study the development of modern painting from Pointillism and Cubism to Neoplasticism.

Influenced by her relationship with noted art historian H.P. Bremmer, Kroller-Muller's educated eye and vast wealth provided the resources for creating a remarkable collection in a short time. Her interest in modern painting drew her to the leading Symbolist, Neo-Impressionist, and Cubist painters of the period. She canoe to see art as evolving from 19th-century Realism towards an increasing "idealism" of spirituality and inner clarity. An early devotee of van Gogh, she created the largest private collection of the Dutch artist's works, ultimately owning more than 90 paintings and 185 drawings. The Kroller-Muller Museum's van Gogh collection is second only to that of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in site and quality.

"Van Gogh to Mondrian" features a grouping of 12 major van Gogh paintings and 10 drawings. Of these, one never has traveled to this country ("Self-Portrait," 1887), and others were last seen in special loan exhibitions more than 50 years ago. This selection of paintings includes iconic images such as "Cafe Terrace at Night" (1888), "Sorrowing Old Man" (1890), and portraits of Joseph and Augustine Roulin. Piet Mondrian is represented with seven paintings spanning a period from 1913 to 1919, reflecting key moments in the artist's evolution. The exhibition also includes architectural designs and models of the Kroller-Muller Museum--which opened in 1938--produced by Hendrick Petrus Berlage, Henry van de Velde, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well as furniture commissioned by the Kroller-Mullers from Berlage and a magnificent stained glass window designed by Bart van der Leck.

Following are brief biographies of some of the...