Gauguin in the World Exhibit Now Showing at Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Exclusive U.S. Venue

The exhibition features more than 150 of Gauguin’s paintings, sculptures, prints and writings assembled from collections around the world

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is the only U.S. venue for an ambitious exhibition of the work of French post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903).

Organized by independent curator Henri Loyrette, former director of the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and leading scholar of 19th-century French painting, the exhibition offers new perspectives on Gauguin’s life and work, his artistic networks and influences and his contemporary legacies, both artistic and historical.

Gauguin in the World will be on view at the MFAH from November 3, 2024 through February 16, 2025.

“20th-century European and American art would never have developed in the ways that it did were it not for Gauguin,” commented Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “He was the key predecessor to the different strands of modernism that developed through Picasso and Matisse, challenging what he perceived as a culture that had reached a dead end and renewing it by exploring and embracing non-Western art. Gauguin was controversial in his own time and remains so today. The scope of this exhibition, and the thoughtful, wide ranging perspectives on Gauguin’s work offered by the catalogue’s authors, promise to illuminate the artist in all of his artistic complexity.”

The exhibition will be organized across six galleries, presenting the arc of Gauguin’s career from the 1870s through his final years, with half of the exhibition devoted to Gauguin’s work in Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands.

Gauguin in the World includes 150 works of art drawn from 65 public and private collections worldwide, including: Musée d’Orsay, Paris; National Galleries of Scotland; 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; National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; and the Musée de Tahiti et des îles, which is lending both their Gauguins and important 19th-century Marquesan sculptural works.

“Gauguin in the World will offer an exceptional opportunity to understand the astonishing range of the artist’s achievement,” noted Ann Dumas, MFAH consulting curator for the exhibition. “Fusing influences as diverse as European Old Masters, Peruvian potters and Egyptian tomb painters, Gauguin created not only sumptuous and richly colored paintings, but also developed entirely original methods of print making, and sculptures in wood and ceramic, dissolving conventional boundaries between art forms. His influence on avant-garde has been profound and continues in our own time.”

RELATED PROGRAMMING:

Tour & Toast | “Gauguin in the World”, Thursday November 21 & December 5, 11 and 18, 6:15 p.m.—7:15 p.m. — Join fellow art enthusiasts for a private group tour through Gauguin in the World.

Drop-in Tour | “Gauguin in the World”, Wednesday, December 4, 1:30 p.m.—2:30 p.m. — The MFAH is the only U.S. venue for this ambitious exhibition showcasing the work of French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin.

Ingenuity and Invention: Paul Gauguin’s Printing Techniques, Thursday, December 5, 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. —Harriet Stratis presents a lecture on Paul Gauguin’s experimentation with techniques and materials in print production.

TICKET INFORMATION:

Please visit https://www.mfah.org/exhibitions/gauguin-in-the-world.

Photos courtesy of MFAH