Gauguin at the Tate
For the first time in over fifty years, England dedicates a solo show to this genius of an artist
Gauguin maker of Myth covers the extraordinary versatility this remarkable figure developed throughout his adventurous and troubled life. Including examples from the different practices he undertook from painting to watercolors or ceramics, carving or decoration of objects. These works from different mediums are exhibited alongside diaries, scrapbooks, sketch pads and illustrations revealing the most intimate nature of his character as well as shredding insight into the different methods of work he adopted.
Gauguin is unveiled as post impressionist and pioneer of modernism. His powerful and risky images were judged as radical at the time. But the exhibition focuses in his rich facet as story-teller and his ability to create fables and myths. With more than a hundred works from public and private collections from around the world, the array pretends to revise the career of this prolific painter from a new and fresh point of view.
the retrospective also challenges assumptions and misconceptions that have haunted this artist all his life. looked upon by his contemporaries as epitomizing the tru life of the bohemian, this vision later carried to the general perception of the public.
Eugéne Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris in 1848 and raised in Peru. He enlisted in the Marines when he was seventeen and travelled the world for six years from Scandinavia to South America. Afterwards he settled in Paris and married a Danish woman when he began working for a stock exchange firm. having fathered five children he quit his job and dedicated himself to pursuing his true vocation in life. In 1886, disillusioned with Paris and the frivolous nature that surrounded the artistic circles of the time, he abandons his family and begins to travel the south seas with occasional visits back home to the last days of his life.