Van Gogh—Cypresses and Two Women Poster

Vincent van Gogh painted *Cypresses and Two Women* in February 1890, during his final months at the mental hospital in Saint-Rémy. Cypresses had become a motif that constantly occupied his mind during this period; he wrote to his brother Theo that he wanted to create a visual language as powerful with these dark, spiky trees as he had achieved with sunflowers. In this small, narrow composition, the two female figures are almost lost beside the massive cypress trees; the trees appear like dark flames rising toward the sky. The painting is one of the most striking examples from Van Gogh’s Saint-Rémy period, in which he depicted nature not merely as he saw it, but with all its inner tension and intensity.