Gauguin. Tales from Paradise

Curated by the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, the exhibition “Gauguin. Tales from Paradise” features approximately 70 works from twelve international museums and private collections, together with artefacts and pictures documenting the places visited by the artist. Next spring the Glyptotek will show a version of the exhibition back in Copenhagen, based on the experiences of this Danish-Italian collaboration. 

The Glyptotek collection of works by Paul Gauguin is one of the world’s most comprehensive, and this exhibition features no less than 35 of the Danish museum’s Gauguins – along with significant works by Cézanne, Pissarro and Van Gogh. It is the first time that such a large part of the Glyptotek Gauguin collection is displayed outside of the museum. Among its highlights is Vahine no te Tiare (Woman with a Flower), one of the first paintings which the artist sent back to France from Tahiti in 1891, as an ambassador of a new and radical art, “made in Polynesia”. 

Besides the significant works from the Glyptotek “Gauguin. Tales from Paradise” includes outstanding masterpieces such as Self-Portrait with Yellow Christ (Musèe d’Orsay, Paris), Mahana no atua (Day of the God) (Art Institute of Chicago) and Volpini Suite (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen).

The art works on display will allow visitors to recognize and analyse the figurative sources of Paul Gauguin’s art, which range from the folk art of Brittany to Egyptian, Peruvian, Cambodian and Javanese art, to the life and culture of Polynesia. By examining some of the artist’s masterpieces in the light of these sources of inspiration, the exhibition aims to illustrate his peculiar and original approach to “primitivism”.