PAUL GAUGUIN

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"Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means." Paul Gauguin

With Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903), the Fondation Beyeler presents one of the most famous and fascinating artists in history.
As one of the great European cultural highlights in the year 2015, the exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler brings together about fifty masterpieces by Gauguin from leading international museums and private collections. Gauguin’s groundbreaking paintings have become icons of modern art and are some of the most significant and valuable cultural treasures in the world. With their luminous colours and elementary forms, they revolutionised art and they still entrance viewers today.
While featuring Gauguin’s diverse self-portraits and his visionary, spiritual paintings from the time he spent in Brittany, the exhibition focuses on the world-famous paintings he created in Tahiti. In those depictions of sensual female figures set amidst idyllic landscapes and often accompanied by emblematic animals, the artist celebrates his ideal of an unspoilt exotic world. Gauguin’s masterpieces convey an exceptional harmony between nature and culture, mysticism and eroticism, dream and reality. In addition to the paintings, the exhibition includes a selection of Gauguin’s outstanding sculptures that evoke the largely vanished art of the South Seas.
Gauguin’s remarkable creations tell of his quest for a lost paradise on earth, of his turbulent history as an artist who moved between different cultures during a life marked by passion and adventure.

For making the exhibition possible through their generous support, our thanks go to:
Hansjörg Wyss, Wyss Foundation, Beyeler-Stiftung, Walter Haefner Stiftung, L. + Th. La Roche Stiftung, Dr. Christoph M. und Sibylla M. Müller, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Novartis, Bundesamt für Kultur, kulturelles.bl und Swisslos Basel-Landschaft