Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao

An Australian-first exhibition of French post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) provides a unique opportunity to see over 140 of his iconic works of art at the National Gallery in Canberra from June 29 to October 7, 2024. Curated by Henri Loyrette, esteemed scholar of 19th Century French art.

Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao is one of the most ambitious exhibitions the National Gallery of Australia has ever staged.

This landmark presentation provides a rare opportunity for visitors to follow the artist’s life journey—from his Impressionist beginnings in 1873 to his final destination in French Polynesia where he created some of his most renowned works, visions of Tahiti that glowed with an entirely new palette of brilliant colour. Visitors will experience the complexity and diversity of his artistic practice in oil paint, ceramic, wood relief and woodcut.    

The National Gallery, in partnership with Art Exhibitions Australia and curator Henri Loyrette, brings Gauguin’s work back to the Pacific region for the first time—to the part of the world where he realised his desire for a new life and a purity of artistic expression.  

M. Loyrette said, “This is the first exhibition devoted to Gauguin and Oceania: a survey of his entire corpus as seen from his final destination, the Marquesas.”

“When Gauguin landed in the Marquesas in September 1901, he knew that he had reached his journey’s end; he had at last found his ‘true homeland’, the place to which he had always aspired. In the twenty months before his death, he continued to develop his art while, in his writings, he set out to review his career as a whole. This is the starting point for an exhibition that reveals that introspection and the art that preceded it, returning to the questions that haunted him as an artist—the challenges that he set himself and solved in his quest for his own identity. By then he felt able to write: ‘Standing at his easel, the painter is slave neither to the past nor the present, neither to nature nor his fellow-man. It is he, still and forever he,” he said. Gauguin defined.  

National Gallery Director, Dr Nick Mitzevich said Gauguin’s World promises to be an artistic drawcard when it opens at the National Gallery on Saturday 29 June 2024.

“This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to personally witness the significant and enduring art of Gauguin, featuring some of his most recognised and acknowledged masterpieces. Many of the works were created in the Pacific region, particularly Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia.”

“Like other contemporary and historic artists, Gauguin’s life and art have increasingly and appropriately been debated here and around the world. In today’s context, Gauguin’s interactions in Polynesia in the later part of the 19th Century would not be accepted and are recognised as such. The National Gallery will explore Gauguin’s life, art and controversial legacy through talks, public programs, a podcast series and films,’ Dr Mitzevich said.

Over 65 leading public and private lenders from as far as the United Kingdom, Japan, São Paulo, Tahiti and Abu Dhabi have generously agreed to share works of art from their collections. The National Gallery is particularly grateful to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris for generously supporting the exhibition as the major lender with 17 exceptional works from their collection.

Musée de Tahiti et des îles is also an important contributor to the exhibition, generously providing their works by Gauguin and important 19th Century Marquesan sculptural works, which will form a special component of the exhibition, providing additional context to Gauguin’s artistic practice and illuminating his years spent in French Polynesia.

To acknowledge Gauguin’s ties to the Pacific region, the National Gallery of Australia will welcome a cultural delegation from Tahiti including representatives from the Government of French Polynesia and a cultural dance group for the opening of the exhibition.

Organised in partnership with Art Exhibitions Australia and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Gauguin’s World provides an opportunity to reconsider Gauguin from a holistic perspective. Following its presentation in Canberra, Gauguin’s World will be staged at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, later in 2024.

Other activities during the season will include a display of collection works by contemporary artists from the Pacific and further afield, and an activation by Aotearoa / Pasifika collective SaVāge K’lub led by artist, poet and acti.VĀ.tor, Rosanna Raymond MNZM.

A fully illustrated publication will be published alongside the exhibition. Edited by exhibition curator Henri Loyrette and featuring his major new essay on Gauguin, the publication will include contributions from Gauguin experts Hiriata Millaud, Nicholas Thomas, Vaiana Giraud, Miriama Bono and Norma Broude.

Gauguin’s World has been made possible through the continued support and generosity of Principal Sponsor Mazda Australia, Principal Donor Singapore Airlines, News Corp, the Australian Government, the Government of French Polynesia and Minister for Tourism, and other valued individual and corporate supporters.

About the lenders
Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao includes 140 works of art drawn from 65 leading public and private collections worldwide including: Musée d'Orsay Paris; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Louvre Abu Dhabi; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo.

About Henri Loyrette
Henri Loyrette is a French 19th Century art history scholar and former Director of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée du Louvre, Paris. As Director of the Louvre, Loyrette is recognised for having expanded the display of the museum’s collection, and the museum itself, to the Louvre-Lens in Northern France and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Loyrette’s areas of specialisation are 19th-century painting and architecture. He is a renowned scholar and acknowledged expert on Edgar Degas, as well as Édouard Manet and other European artists of the period.

Media enquiries
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