Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum presents Gauguin and the voyage to the exotic, an exhibition on view from 09 October 2012 to 13 January 2013.
Paul Gauguin Mata Mua (Once upon a Time). 1892. Oil on canvas. 91 x 69 cm. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Colection, on deposit with the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum of Madrid.
Paul Gauguin’s flight to Tahiti, where he regained primitivism via exoticism, is the guiding thread of this exhibition. Through a comprehensive selection of works by late 19th- and early 20thcentury artists it will reveal how travel to supposedly more authentic regions brought about a transformation of creative language, while also analysing the degree to which this experience conditioned the rise of modern art. Curated by Paloma Alarcó, Chief Curator of Modern Painting at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, the exhibition will focus on the results of the artistic explorations undertaken by artists including Gauguin, Matisse, Kandinsky, Klee and Macke. It will also look at Gauguin’s influence on the German Expressionists and the French Fauves, thus emphasising his role as the creator of a new and exotic canon that functioned as the starting point for the avant-garde artistic idioms that arose in the early decades of the 20th century. – www.museothyssen.org