Date: Fri 27-Nov-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: CAROLL

Quick Words:

Gauguin-Waller-Indianapolis

Full Text:

Indianapolis Museum Of Art Acquires World Renowned Collection Of Art By

Gauguin And His Followers

(with 3 cuts)

INDIANAPOLIS, IND. -- Bret Waller, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art,

has announced the museum's acquisition of 101 paintings and prints by Paul

Gauguin and the artists who gathered around him a century ago in the

picturesque French village of Pont-Aven, forming one of the pivotal movements

in Modern art.

The works will be unveiled in a special exhibition scheduled to open in March

1999 and continue through July in the Allen Whitehill Clowes Special

Exhibition Gallery of the IMA. In the fall of 1999, they will be incorporated

into the museum's permanent collection galleries.

The 17 paintings (including three by Gauguin) and 84 prints all come from the

renowned collection of Swiss entrepreneur Samuel Josefowitz, considered one of

the world's foremost collectors.

The Pont-Aven paintings, valued in excess of $30 million, are coming to the

IMA as a combination gift/purchase made possible by a $20 million challenge

grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc -- the largest foundation grant the museum has

ever received -- and the generosity of the Josefowitz family and other museum

supporters. The 84 Pont-Aven prints are an additional gift from Samuel

Josefowitz.

"The IMA has now enhanced its collection to the point that it will become a

magnet for people who are interested in art of the Post-Impressionist era,"

Waller said.

According to Waller, the collection is of international significance; its

acquisition by the IMA "is as meaningful to this city and state as securing a

major corporate headquarters or professional sports team."

Securing a key portion of the world's leading private collection of the

Pont-Aven School represents a coup for the IMA. "The Josefowitz collection,

assembled over the course of more than 40 years, simply could not be formed

today," said chief curator Ellen Lee. "It is the finest, most comprehensive

private collection of its kind in the world. This acquisition is strategic for

the IMA -- it is a landmark event in our collection's growth."

"The Pont-Aven works have never been for sale," Samuel Josefowitz stated. "But

in the course of my association with the IMA -- especially Ellen Lee and Bret

Waller -- I decided Indianapolis would be the right place to have a

significant group of these pictures. Also, the pictures have a tremendous

synergy with the works the museum already owns."

According to Lee, the Pont-Aven School works are especially significant to the

IMA's collection because they represent one of two key schools in late

Nineteenth Century European painting -- the other school being

Neo-Impressionism, which was pioneered by Georges Seurat. Lee said the IMA

already holds the finest collection of Neo-Impressionist paintings in the

United States. With the addition of the Pont-Aven works, the IMA collection

documents the two leading movements of the Post-Impressionist era.

"If you think of the four artists who became the grandfathers of modernism --

Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Paul Cezanne, and Vincent van Gogh -- only the

first two had an immediate following," Waller said. "There was no School of

Cezanne or van Gogh, but both Seurat and Gauguin gave rise to movements that

were in many respects rivals."

It was Lee's research on the IMA's Neo-Impressionist collection that led to

her first meeting with Josefowitz in 1983. Since that time, the collector and

the museum have been in steady contact, and special exhibitions and individual

loans from the Josefowitz collection have appeared at the IMA since 1988. That

year the IMA hosted the exhibition "The Prints of the Pont-Aven School:

Gauguin and his Circle in Brittany," drawn entirely from the Josefowitz

collection. In 1994 the IMA premiered the US tour of a painting exhibition

from his collection, Gauguin and the School of Pont-Aven. Josefowitz has said

that the idea of making the IMA the permanent home for a large portion of his

Pont-Aven collection came to him when Lee approached him in the hope of

purchasing additional Neo-Impressionist works with help from Lilly Endowment,

Inc.

Although many people are more familiar with the paintings of Gauguin made

during his later years in Tahiti, it was actually in the village of Pont-Aven,

in the French province of Brittany, that Gauguin developed the style for which

he is best known. Gauguin first visited the remote artists' colony in 1886,

and an international group of artists soon gathered around him.

During Gauguin's era, Pont-Aven was culturally and psychologically distant

from the cosmopolitan capital of Paris. The people of the region cherished

their religious rituals, spoke a Gaelic language, and often wore traditional

costumes. Pont-Aven's rugged landscape added to the area's romantic appeal.

Among those who joined Gauguin was 20-year-old French artist Emile Bernard.

Together, the two men formulated the principles of the Pont-Aven School,

calling for a fusion of the artist's subjective reaction to nature and his

sense of design. Rejecting the Impressionists' emphasis on close observation

of nature, Gauguin and his colleagues explored the decorative and expressive

potential of line, color and pattern.

"As to me, the most striking thing about the Pont-Aven School was the honesty

of vision," Josefowitz said. "This is not only a story of individual painters

but of a rare moment in history, when a group of people came together and

created something new."

The IMA's new acquisition features three paintings by Gauguin, four works by

Emile Bernard, two paintings by both Maurice Denis and Paul Serusier, as well

as individual works by Charles Laval, Charles Filiger, Henry Moret, Jan

Verkade, Armand Seguin and Cuno Amiet.

"Now we will be able to exhibit all the critical players, providing a full

picture of their motifs and aesthetics," Lee commented.

The 84 pieces in the print collection represent the work of Gauguin, Bernard,

Seguin and Serusier, as well as rare prints by Henri Delavallee, Roderic

O'Conor and Maxime Maufra.

"This collection of prints is virtually unique in the world. It reveals the

universe, experimental approaches that made the Pont-Aven School so

progressive," Lee said.