Medellin, Colombia, May 13 (EFE).– The inauguration in this northwestern Colombian city of the multisensory exhibition “Van Gogh Alive: The Experience” will serve to immerse art lovers in the Dutch post-Impressionist painter’s visionary “madness.”

Installed at the Plaza Mayor until June 28, when it will be taken to Bogota, the exhibition comprises more than 1,000 drawings and 900 paintings by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) that are displayed for visitors through a high-resolution system that features cinema-quality surround sound and projections of the artist’s paintings onto big screens located on the walls, floor and columns.

“We have 360-degree screens,” Francisco Goñi, the Latin America director of Grande Exhibitions, the Australian company that created the exhibition, told EFE.

“They’re on the ground, on the walls and above our heads to expose visitors to Van Gogh’s story from dynamic points of view and allow them to feel the brush strokes of his madness,” he said, referring to the artist’s struggles with mental illness.

Thursday’s arrival of the exhibition in Medellin was enlivened by the presence of “silleteros,” flower farmers who paid tribute to Van Gogh by carrying elaborate floral arrangements on their backs, just as they do during an annual festival in that city.

“Medellin is Latin America’s cultural capital and it has a very dynamic idiosyncrasy,” Goñi said. “That is why we chose it as the starting place for the exhibition” in the Andean nation.

After an initial Latin American stop in Chile, where nearly 100,000 people visited the exhibition, its creators have expectations higher than the 8-meter (26-foot) tall columns on which the images are projected.

“We expect to receive 300,000 people,” Goñi said, adding that the mounting of the exhibition in Medellin required 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of cables, 48 projectors and 28 screens.

Employing “Sensory 4” technology with multi-screen surroundings, it features an introductory area where visitors learn about the artist’s story and his most important paintings.

The final stop for the exhibition in Colombia will be the southwestern city of Cali, where it will be on display from Nov. 8 to Dec. 20. EFE