Sunflowers 1910

Janos Mattis-Teutsch created this artwork, entitled Sunflowers, using a light and airy palette. The sunflower, with its face turned perpetually towards the sun, carries within it a potent symbol of adoration and longing. Recall the myth of Clytie, who, consumed by unrequited love for Apollo, transformed into a sunflower, forever gazing upon her beloved. This theme resonates across cultures, from ancient Greece to the modern era. In Van Gogh’s series of sunflowers, for instance, we see a similar yearning, a striving for light and warmth amidst personal turmoil. The sunflower then becomes not merely a botanical specimen but a vessel of human emotion, a repository of collective memory. Its persistent return in art is like a recurrent dream, a symbol of hope and resilience against life’s shadows.