Paul Gauguin

June 10 - November 22, 1998
every day from 10 am to 6 pm

His first painted self-portrait dates from 1885 (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth), and a sequence of self-portraits in the exhibition demonstrates not only the changes in style from Impressionist to Post-Impressionist and Symbolist, but also reflects his own changing and challenging concepts of "the artist".

Gauguin found his own artistic voice between 1886 and 1891, especially during his stays in Brittany at Pont-Aven and Le Pouldu, but also in Martinique (1887) and in Arles with Van Gogh (1888).

Many important paintings from this "synthetic" or "cloisonnist" phase, when he created a "School of Pont-Aven" style to which Emile Bernard and others also contributed, are present in the exhibition.

His stays in the South Seas (1891-1893 and 1895 to 1903) will also be well-represented, with a mixture of well-known works and others less well-known.

Visitors can test the "truth" of the tropical idyll, watch the expansion of Gauguin's decorative skills, and admire his use of many media, often in new and experimental ways.

Thus, the exhibition will contain fans, watercolours and drawings ; it will include the eleven lithographs on yellow paper shown at the Volpini exhibtion in 1889 ; it will have many of his superb woodcuts and magnificent monotypes that characterised his output from 1893 to his death in 1903.

And it will have an outstanding selection of Gauguin's wood-sculptures from some of the earliest (1880) to some of the latest, including relief-sculptures as well as large and small free-standing figures.

In brief, all aspects of this multi-talented artist will be glimpsed in this carefully selected exhibition of some 120 works, which come from many important museums.

The commissaire of the exhibition, Pr Ronald Pickvance, has already organized the two importants and highly successful exhibitions at the Foundation Pierre Gianadda on Degas in 1993 (241'295 visitors) and Manet in 1996 (290'335 visitors).

The catalogue also contains a number of essays by specialists.
(CHF 45.-, euro 30.-).

Order the catalogue