Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has brought out the bulk of its Rembrandt holdings to open a new show intended to show the 17th century master in a new light.
The show includes all 22 of the museum’s Rembrandt paintings, 60 drawings and the best prints of its 300 etchings. The show opens today and runs through June 10.
Taco Dibbits, general director of the museum, told reporters that ‘When you walk into this exhibition, you walk into Rembrandt’s life – Rembrandt the rebel, who does not follow the rules of art, who isn’t about beauty but about the raw reality. He draws all of us in our beauty, our ugliness, our imperfections, joy and grief.’ Dibbits also said ‘He draws himself like no other artist, with more selfies – if I could call them that – than you can imagine.”
Erik Hinterding, curator for this exhibition, said he aimed to display the engaging, personal quality of his work. “He was a sort of Instagrammer. He made kind of snapshots of what was happening at home…no artist before him had let us into his bedroom.”
