One of the most interesting and impactful things I have done in the past year is to determine a “Top 20 of favorite artworks of all times world wide”. It started as a pass time after reading about book top 20’s of famous people. I scribbled my favorite artists and some of their best work on a piece of paper and not long after I had put together the top 20 of my favorite artworks of all times world wide.
So I had a list. Nice, but nothing special, yet. It was not until I added the locations where these artworks are currently exposed things got interesting. The 20 artworks are scattered around the globe, a lot in New York’s finest museums (MoMA, Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art), several in museums in Europe, but Asia and Australia are also on the list. There it was! I had to go and see all these artworks! A combination of travelling plans and lots of energy emerged in me and I started to plan several trips and museums to visit.
In this part of the website I will update you about the list itself and about my adventures travelling the world to see the artworks. I hope reading about it is as rewarding as it is to experience it. I can recommend everyone to make your own list and plan your dreams or trips around it!
My alter ego for this enterprise – chasing my Top 20 – is ‘the big painter from Holland’, which is a reference to my size, not my stature :-). You can find me on Instagram under that name: @thebigpainterfromholland.
The green lines I have visited by the time I write this (September 2026), the orange lines are already planned trips! I have so much fun preparing and looking forward to these trips! I hope to share my enthusiasm and energy with you as time goes by and more lines will become orange and green.
Madrid – Spain (2026)
I travelled to Madrid with my son to visit the Reina Sofia museum, where my #2 painting is located. The size of the canvas, the importance of the subject and the greatness of the painter make that I put ‘Guernica’ on the number two spot of my list. I loved it, especially the fact that there are many imperfections on it. It is so famous and so known, that I was drawn most to the lines I did not know were on the painting.
After visiting ‘Guernica’, I was a little bit disappointed. The Reina Sofia Museum does not do the painting a lot of good. It is old and not really worthy of this Picasso masterpiece. The painting itself is impressive, but did not touch me as other paintings did. After I have seen all 20 paintings, I will do another rating. My guess is Guernica will not be in my top 3 then. Nevertheless, a unique and very important masterpiece.
Iowa City – United Stated of America (2026)
Not long after Madrid I travelled to the US to meet a special friend of mine, a fellow artist. She lives in the city of Waterloo in Iowa. In preparation of this trip, I noticed that Waterloo is just an hour drive from Iowa City, where the Stanley Museum of Art houses. The museum is part of the campus of the University of Iowa.
What a beautiful building and what a wonderful collection! My #3 and #17 are there, but there are many more gems in this museum. We had a remarkable afternoon, full of emotion and full of joy and energy.
The #17 of my top 20 is this beautiful large work from Robert Motherwell, which is exhibited in a beautiful room in the museum. Seeing it in full size on the wall was very impressive. Lovely artwork.
The #3 from my top 20 when I first put it together was ‘Mural’ by Jackson Pollock. After “experiencing” the painting in all its glory in the Stanley Museum, its only place in my list right now would be the #1 spot. What a massive painting and what an emotion, energy and movement is in it. Everything I hoped for and then some, that is what this Pollock gave me that beautiful day in June in Iowa City. Unique creation, legendary.
Chicago – United States of America
On the way back from Iowa City, we stopped by the Art Institute of Chicago, that landmark museum in the windy city. They had a show of Willem de Kooning’s work, with paintings and a lot of drawings from the Dutch master of abstract expressionism. Next to paintings from the famous ‘Women’ series, my favorite Willem De Kooning painting was there, the interesting and extremely detailed ‘Excavation’.
‘Excavation’ did not give me emotional reactions like ‘Mural’ did, but it definitively is a remarkable and complex artwork, that you can study for hours without seeing every line, every detail and every color or shade. A beautiful painting, which I originally put on as my #5. Where it will go after seeing all 20 works, I am not sure, yet, but my guess is it will still be in the top 10.
Amstelveen – The Netherlands
After the trips to Spain and the US it was time to see a painting which is from another Dutch artist and which houses in a Dutch museum in Amstelveen, the COBRA museum. Karel Appel was an important artist who was part of a European avant-garde art movement, the COBRA group of artists from Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam. The movement existed from 1948 – 1951. So I took my son to the COBRA museum in Amstelveen.
‘Women, Children, Animals’ by Karel Appel is the #8 in my list. I love Karel Appel from when I was a child, his very basic stroke and his genius choice of colors gets me every time. This particular painting has such a balance in both the colors and the figures, it actually calms me down. I just love it.
New York City – United States of America
When the New York Metropolitan Museum announced their blockbuster exhibition “Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous”, which is showing from October 4th 2026 until Januari 31st of 2027, I knew this would be the best opportunity and timing for me to go to New York. The 3 day trip will tick of 10 (!) out of my top 20 paintings, 5 within the exhibition, saving me trips to Paris and Potomac, and 5 other paintings in MoMA and Guggenheim in New York City. My travel plans to NYC are not definite, yet, but it looks like I will visit this extraordinary exhibition in November. Imagine the number of works that did not make my top 20, but I really love, like Lee Krasner’s Little Images series, or ‘Bald Eagle’, ‘The Seasons’ and the Mosaic table, or Pollock’s ‘Convergence’ and ‘Autumn Rhythm, number 30’. Cannot wait!!!
Hakone – Japan
Next stop will be Hakone, near Tokyo in Japan, where we will visit the Pola Museum of Art to see Gerhard Richter’s ‘Abstraktes Bild [649-2]’. Such a nice cause to make a trip around :-). We will only go in 2027, so a little patience is required.
This part of the website will be updated as the trips are made and new photo’s and stories can be shared. Keep an eye on this page or check out @thebigpainterfromholland on Instagram.