Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) – there’s no getting round him. Neither in the history of art nor in the Glyptotek. The Glyptotek’s collection of the artist’s works is among the best in the world. The Spring Special Exhibition adds a new chapter to the story of the French artist. It illustrates his experimental wrestling with the so-called primitive.

Wide ranging
With some 60 works, in every medium in which the artist worked, the exhibition delivers both an overview and a sharp focus on Gauguin’s wide-ranging life’s work. The exhibition follows the artist’s unremitting struggle to create his very own idea of ‘the primitive’ across cultures and geographical destinations.

‘The primitive’
The exhibition presents Gauguin as an uncompromising artist. An artist, who early on, and without hesitation, found a clear trail to follow in his pursuit of ‘the true’. Despite personal and economic reverses, when he pursued ‘the primitive’, it was not in the form of an ethnographical venture, but rather proceeded from an artistic vision. His world of motifs and imagery, whether inspired by Brittany, Egypt or Polynesia, strive after ‘the primitive’ as a concept. With Gauguin, as the exhibition demonstrates, ‘the primitive’ should be understood as both something eternally valid, firmly rooted in human nature, and as an artistic brand of equal parts fiction and reality.

This event is based on the exhibition “Gauguin – Tales from Paradise”. The exhibition curated the Glyptotek in the autumn of 2015 for MUDEC – Museo delle Culture di Milano.

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