The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek has acquired a new masterpiece by the French painter Paul Gauguin. The work has been presented to the museum by the Ny Carlsberg Foundation and the Augustinus Foundation.
When the Glyptotek’s great Gauguin exhibition opens on Saturday 24th September, the public will be able to experience for the first time the museum’s new masterpiece by Paul Gauguin. The title is ”Pape moe”, and this magnificent presentation has been made possible by the generosity of the Ny Carlsberg Foundation and the Augustinus Foundation.
The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek already possesses one of the world’s largest Gauguin collections, and ”Pape moe” will now take its place in a unique collection numbering 47 works.
The Glyptotek receives this central work in a year when the museum, after several years of intensive work opens the exhibition “Gauguin & Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise”. Here it can be seen in the company of other masterpieces by Gauguin and of the Polynesian culture by which he was inspired.
The wooden relief “Papa moe” (which means “mysterious water”) shows a male Polynesian drinking from a waterfall. It was carved from Breton door panels and dates from Gauguin’s interim sojourn in France in 1894, but was based on impressions from his two-year stay in Polynesia of 1891-93. This extraordinary work can be regarded as a focal figure for the whole of Gauguin’s notion of “the primitive”. Here the Breton and Tahitian art of wood-carving come together around the expressive, simple rawness Gauguin saw as a primeval power in human life throughout all ages and cultures