“Van Gogh and the Olive Groves”
Monini celebrates the Van Gogh Museums new exhibition Van Gogh and the Olive Groves, dedicated to the olive tree, with a Special Edition of design cans.
Spoleto, March 14 2022 – The millenary olive tree, with its sinuous shapes, its characteristic “knotted” trunk and its thick green foliage, is at the center of the experience of Monini, an historic Italian company that has made known and spread extra virgin olive oil throughout Italy and around the world.
The predilection for this precious plant today unites Monini, which has been producing extra virgin olive oil for more than 100 years, with the work of one of the most famous painters of all time, Vincent van Gogh. The olive tree is the subject of several masterpieces dedicated to the nature of the Provençal period of the master of post-impressionism.
The exhibition “Van Gogh and the Olive Groves” hosted from 11 March to 12 June 2022 at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and created with the support of the Italian company is dedicated to 15 of these masterpieces. An international initiative that celebrates Van Gogh’s fascination with the olive tree as a powerful symbol which for the artist perfectly embodies man’s connection with nature.
It is therefore nature, strong and saving, which finds its most powerful expression in the olive tree, which deeply unites Monini and Vincent van Gogh. For the company it represents the most precious thing there can be because it provides the raw material from which they originate its products and makes Monini known throughout the world. For Van Gogh nature is an important protagonist in his works: from cypresses to sunflowers, from irises to flower gardens to the famous starry skies, wheat fields and much loved olive trees.
It is in his paintings of olive groves that Vincent van Gogh wanted to express peace and refuge. For Monini the olive tree is the bearer of a message of hope: it is nourishment for the body and soul and a source of inspiration for a better tomorrow made of concreteness, quality, harmony and respect for the nature that surrounds us. A future that is so dear to Monini that it has entitled his own Sustainability Plan “A Hand for The Future“.
“There is no defense of the environment, territory and people without the right space for art and culture which, with the power of emotions, help to spread awareness and participation in the sustainability objectives that have now become an urgent need that cannot be deferred, a duty that companies such as ours put at the center of our projects ” says Maria Flora Monini, Head of Communication and External Relations for the company. “This exhibition has conquered us immediately, not only because it celebrates the olive tree, a symbol of our history, but because it brings poetry into the everyday life of habitual gestures, such as buying a bottle of extra virgin olive oil without paying attention to the real value contained in that bottle“.
Willem van Gogh, great-grandson of Vincent Van Gogh’s brother Theo and Advisor to the Board of the Van Gogh Museum says: “For Vincent, olive trees signified comforting feelings of eternity, and unity with nature. We are delighted that, thanks to the support of Monini, the Van Gogh Museum has the opportunity to shine the spotlights on this important subject in Van Gogh’s oeuvre.”
The exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum which houses the largest collection of works by the Dutch painter, an unmissable point of interest on trips to Amsterdam, offers Monini the opportunity to bring the artist’s magic and his passion for nature into homes and on the tables, of all the world.
Monini has selected three splendid paintings by Van Gogh, chosen as the most representative of the artist’s poetics, to faithfully reproduce them on as many half-liter cans of the “best fruit of the olive tree”: Monini extra virgin olive oil, Superior Category, 100% Italian.
The result was a limited edition on which to admire the famous “Self-portrait with straw hat” (1887), in which Van Gogh -who has always been fascinated by nature seems to invite us to look at the landscape with his eyes – and two paintings dedicated to nature, the “Olive Grove”, (1889), on display in Amsterdam, and the gorgeous “Field with Irises near Arles”, (1888).
A collection edition that combines artistic value with historical value because the cans reproduce the original ones with which Monini extra virgin olive oil began its journey from Spoleto to the world.
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Olive Grove (detail) (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) | Olive Grove (detail) (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) | Olive Trees on a Hillside (detail) (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) |
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Further information available on the Museum website at the link https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/visit/whats-on/exhibitions/van-gogh-and-the-olive-groves
