![Vincent van Gogh - Tree Roots [1890]](http://farm1.staticflickr.com/719/22073884572_1e493a6903_o.jpg)
Van Gogh had already made several drawings of tree roots in The Hague in 1882. He wrote at the time of his wish ‘to express something of life’s struggle […] in those gnarled black roots’. It is tempting to see the same symbolism in these twisted tree roots, painted eight years later. The work seems to consist at first sight of a jumble of bright colours and abstract forms, prompting some art historians to identify Van Gogh as an important forerunner of abstract art. If you keep looking, however, you make out the tree roots, plants and leaves, and beneath them the brown and yellow of the sandy forest floor, all laid down on the canvas with powerful brushstrokes and oily gobs of paint.
[Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm