Celebrating Gauguin

Femmes de Tahiti [Sur la plage] (Tahitian Women [On the Beach])
1891 (150 Kb); Oil on canvas, 69 x 91 cm (27 1/8 x 35 7/8 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris

- Gauguin, (Eugène-Henri-) Paul (b. June 7, 1848, Paris, Fr.--d. May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia)

The Cleveland Museum of Art "is staging a major international exhibit -- an "exhibition about an exhibition" covering artist Paul Gauguin's early years. The exhibit opens Sunday and runs through Jan. 18, 2010. (The only stop in the States before it moves on to Amsterdam.)

Before his Tahiti paintings made him famous, Gauguin was snubbed by the 1889 Paris World's Fair.

Instead, he and other artists staged a rival exhibit in a Paris cafe.

Those Gauguin paintings that were in that exhibit will be featured at the CMA exhibit.

After Jan. 18, the exhibit goes to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The exhibit is entitled "Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889" and includes more than 75 paintings, sculptures and works on paper by Gauguin and the artists of his time.

It also has the first reinstallation of works from Gauguin's 1889 exhibition in Paris.." (source)

Arearea (Joyousness) 1892; Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Tehamana Has Many Ancestors (Merahi metua no
Tehamana) (oil on canvas, 30 x
21-3/8 inches) can be found at The Art Institute of Chicago.

Vision after the Sermon (oil on
canvas, 28-3/4x36-1/4 inches) hangs in the National
Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Paul Gauguin went against the grain of his time. And I rather like that. In fact, I encourage it. He died all alone in his hut savaged by a morphine addiction, but still.

Okay, now that I think about it, maybe skip that last part.

*** 36 Hours in Cleveland from The New York Times

*** Master works get room to breathe with Cleveland Museum of Art expansion from USA TODAY

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