It's called Van Gogh Up Close and this is the show's only US venue. The exhibit includes more than 40 of Van Gogh's still lifes and landscape paintings done in the last 3 and a half years of his life….works that helped alter the course of modern painting.
Van Gogh was an active artist for just 10 years of his short life and it was in the very end, he did his most daring work….when he moved to Paris in 1886 and saw his first impressionist picture.
"That's the kick-off of our thing when he really gets into the most experimental, out there, self-defining point in his life," said Joe Rishel, Curator of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Van Gogh discovered color and painted 'close-ups' of flowers, trees, open fields and forests.
"He's re-thinking. Paint comes up in your face. Trees are sort of nailed to the frame, bottom to top, like bars keeping you in," added Rishel.
In 1888, Van Gogh sought refuge in the French countryside and painted a series of landscapes from the window of the asylum where he'd voluntarily committed himself.
"He is a great artist who had horrible, horrible psychological problems, and you look at the last picture in the show, it is exalting. It's fabulous, it's glorious and not this sad little beaten down character. It's bold and wonderful," said Rishel.
The paintings in the exhibit are on international loan and have never been seen together.
"I'd like people saying 'boy is he a great painter. He moves paint around like nobody' but also saying 'gee, that's a surprise,' said Rishel.
Van Gogh Up Close is on display through May 6th. For ticketing info, go to Philadelphia Museum of Art.