MADRID – The work done by Paul Gauguin before he took up his Polynesian idyll is at the centre of a major new exhibition in Madrid.

“Gauguin and the Origins of Symbolism” is one of the most important exhibitions in Spain this year.

The show comprises 186 canvases by Gauguin and contemporaries such as Van Gogh, Cezanne, Degas and Picasso.

Sponsored by Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza museum and the Caja Foundation, the exhibition, which opened Monday, offers viewers a chance to steep themselves in the evolution of the artist’s work before his self-imposed exile in Tahiti.

“I still can’t believe it,” said curator Guillermo Solana, who has spent four years working on a project meant to illuminate the transformation of modern painting.

Loans from close to 100 contributors – including 63 museums – have enabled Solana to put together an exhibition highlighting Gauguin as a seminal figure in that transformation.

The exhibition focuses on the period from 1884-91, when the Parisian painter went from being a secondary exponent of Impressionism to the foremost proponent of Symbolist art.

Solana said visitors will see “one man’s enormous transformation over a matter of a few years, from a stockbroker who paints on Sundays to a painter consumed by his art”.

Illustrating Gauguin’s development, are works from 65 museums and several private collections, including the masterpiece “Vision After the Sermon,” on special loan from the National Gallery of Scotland, in Edinburgh, and “Life and Death,” provided by Cairo’s Mahmud Khalil museum.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news