The sunflower inspires

Takii and the Van Gogh Museum ushered in the summer of 2021 with a surprising and cheerful Sunflower Flash. The master florists of The Wunderkammer gave their creative expression to Van Gogh’s world-famous source of inspiration: the sunflower. The result: floral art across Amsterdam, wishing a crowd of curious onlookers a sunny summer filled with sunflower inspiration.

The Sunflower Flash Amsterdam is the result of a collaboration between Takii and the Van Gogh Museum. The Japanese breeder is a partner of the Van Gogh Museum since 2015 and developer of ‘Sunrich – Van Gogh’s Favorite’ sunflowers. For this occasion, the master florists of The Wunderkammer were invited to interpret Van Gogh’s works with the Sunrich collection. The floral art was shared with the crowd at the Nieuwmarkt, at Station Bijlmer ArenA and the Mosplein in Amsterdam.

The Sunflower paintings are among Vincent van Gogh’s most famous artworks. In Arles in southern France, in 1888 and 1889, he painted a total of five large canvasses of sunflowers in a vase, one of which is in the permanent collection of the Van Gogh Museum. The sunflowers, painted with three shades of yellow ‘and nothing else’, were especially meaningful to Vincent: he saw them as symbols of inspiration, friendship and gratitude.

Like Van Gogh, The Wunderkammer draws inspiration from the sunflowers and thus shows that it is possible to create a representation with many variants of a single colour without losing its expressiveness.

“I think there are few flowers as powerful as these. Give someone a sunflower and you will see their face light up! The painting radiates the same positive energy that sunflowers do.” says Florian Seyd, founder of The Wunderkammer, in the compilation video of the Sunflower Flash Amsterdam.

Sander van der Meer, sunflower expert at Takii, agrees; “the power, the symbolism, the beauty through its simplicity. The sunflower is called the queen of summer flowers for a reason. The extensive Sunrich range, with all kinds of radiant yellow colours, lends itself perfectly to go creative with sunflowers this summer!”