February – May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers

February – May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers at the Met Museum

February - May 2017 Art Event in NYC: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers
Hercules Segers, Mountain Valley with Fenced Fields, c. 1615-1630, etching, ink

The mystery of a faraway land, the beauty of new space, the expectation of secrets, the passing of time…. All of it is on full view at the Met exhibition of Hercules Segers, 17th century Dutch Golden Age master known for his prints, etchings and oil paintings. This is the first exhibition for Segers in the USA. Not many details of the artist’s life is known to us now but from what we do know he was well regarded by his contemporaries. He brought in pioneering techniques to printmaking by mixing colors, mediums and textures. At his time in the first half of 17th century his methods were fresh and groundbreaking like the impressionism at its time. Add to it an assumption that the artists had never traveled farther than between Haarlem, where he was born, and Amsterdam in the Low Countries but filled his work with mountainous views, and the mystery surrounding the master persists. The New York Times calls the exhibition mesmerizing and the New York Review of Books notes that “an air of unreality hangs over” Segers’s paintings. 

Venue: The Met Museum on Fifth Avenue        Time: till May 21, 2017