KEY Magazine Fort Worth

The Kimbell Art Museum Presents
Gauguin and Impressionism

The Kimbell Art Museum's exhibition "Gauguin and Impressionism," is the first comprehensive survey of Paul Gauguin's early career. Its only American venue, the exhibition will be on view until March 26, 2006.

Presenting the subtle and beautiful works of roughly the first half of Gauguin's career-from 1875 to 1887–the exhibition will confirm the increasing appreciation of the young Gauguin's importance as an Impressionist painter, as well as his status, together with Degas, as the most innovative sculptor of the group.

Dr. Timothy Potts, director of the Kimbell Art Museum, commented, "It is rare today that an exhibition on an artist as well known and popular as Gauguin can claim to present a largely unknown but central aspect of his achievement. Yet it is just this sort of revelation that "Gauguin and Impressionism" promises to bring, spotlighting for the first time his critical impact as a painter and sculptor of Impressionism, and bringing together nearly all of the major works he presented in the group's exhibitions."

"Gauguin and Impressionism" is comprised of more than 50 paintings and 15 sculptures and ceramics on loan from museums and private collections around the world.

Gauguin's sculptural works are crucial to the understanding of his development during his Impressionist period, and indeed his activities in this area were often even more searching and radical than his early paintings. After making his debut with a couple of traditional marble busts, he moved on to a revolutionary series of woodcarvings--made between 1880 and 1884, often in a "dialogue" with Degas-in which he experimented with deliberate stylization, mixed materials, and polychromy.

"Gauguin and Impressionism" was organized by the Kimbell Art Museum and the Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen, and is curated jointly by Dr. Richard R. Brettell, an esteemed scholar of Impressionism and modern painting, and Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark, director of the Ordrupgaard, Copenhagen.

The Kimbell will also exhibit Gauguin's Nave Nave Mahana (Delightful Day) of 1896,on loan from the Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon. Other lenders to the exhibition include the Musée d'Orsay, Paris; the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Courtauld Institute of Art, London; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Rudolf Staechelin Family Foundation, Basel; the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne; the Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo; and the Fine Arts Museum, Budapest.

"Gauguin and Impressionism" is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

The illustrated catalogue, co-authored by curators Brettell and Fonsmark, is published by Yale University Press, in association with the Kimbell Art Museum and the Ordrupgaard. Admission prices are $12 general admission, $10 for seniors age 60 and over and students with ID, and $8 for children between 6 and 11. Free admission for children under 6 and museum members. An Acoustiguide audio tour will be available for $4 ($3 for museum members). Admission prices are half-off on Tuesdays (not applicable to the Acoustiguide audio tour).

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