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    Aguirre - Gauguin April 5 - NY 1920

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    Aguirre - Gauguin April 5 - NY 1920

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    Mariana Aguirre
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    aguirre - gauguin April 5 — NY 1920

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    Aguirre - Gauguin April 5 - NY 1920

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    HOME (/)

    ABOUT
    WH AT WE D O ( / WH AT-WE- D O )
    CONTACT ( /CONTACT)
    TEAM (/TEAM)
    POSTS
    A PR I L ( /A PR I L )
    M AY ( / M AY )
    JUNE ( /JUNE)
    J U LY ( / J U LY )
    AU G U ST ( /AU G U ST )
    SEPTEMBER ( /SEPTEMBER)
    OCTOBER ( /OCTOBER)
    NOVEMBER ( /NOVEMBER)
    DECEMBER (/DECEMBER)
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    FEBRUARY ( /FEBRUARY)
    MARCH (/MARCH)
    SOURCES
    BIBLIOGRAPHY / FURTHER READING ( /BIBLIOGRAPHY)
    RESEARCH RESOURCES (/RESOURCES)
    A RT I C L E S BY J O N AT H A N G O L D M A N ( /A RT I C L E S -J O N AT H A N - G O L D M A N )

    Paintings by Paul Gauguin at the De


    APRIL
    APRIL 1 (/APR-1)

    APRIL 3 (/APR-3)
    APRIL 4 (/APR-4)
    Zayas Gallery
    APRIL 5 (/APR-5) GUEST POST BY MARIANA AGUIRRE
    ( H t t p : // W w w . E s t e t i c a s . U n a m . M x / M a r i a n a _ a g u i r r e ) ,
    Instituto De Investigaciones Estéticas (UNAM),
    M ex i co C i ty. ( B I O B E LOW. )

    One hundred years ago today… Thanks to Mexican cartoonist


    and cultural promoter Marius de Zayas (1880-1961), New Yorkers
    could see French painter Paul Gauguin's work up close.

    /
    Marius de Zayas, 1925. Photo by Alfred Steiglitz. National Gallery of Art.

    De Zayas, the son of a rich writer and lawyer from Veracruz,


    moved to New York in 1907. He collaborated with Alfred Stieglitz
    and was the first to exhibit African art alongside modernist
    works in the United States. Although his interest in Cubism was
    not immediate, the artist soon began to promote this style and
    other strands of French modernism in his adopted city. From
    1919 to 1921, de Zayas organized several exhibits featuring
    European and American modernists as well as non-Western art
    at the De Zayas gallery 549 5th Avenue, between 46th and 47th
    Streets.  
    /
    Title page and list of works, Paul Gaughin. De Zayas Gallery, April 5,, 1920.
    Abebooks.com.

    Between April 5 and April 17, 1920, the De Zayas Gallery


    displayed several works by Paul Gauguin, whose move to Tahiti
    sparked French artists’ interest in ‘primitive’ art. The exhibit
    /
    f t d thi t t k hi h th i h db d
    featured thirty-two works, which the organizer had borrowed
    thanks to the contacts developed during his trips to Paris. This
    built upon the first two exhibits at the gallery, which featured
    Chinese and African art, respectively. These exhibits were later
    complemented by an exhibit of French, American, Asian, and
    African art in September-December 1920 and by an exhibit of
    Chinese paintings in February 1921.

    Paul Gauguin, View of Pont Aven from Lezaven, 1888. Wikicommons.

    The exhibit of Gauguin’s works was the artist’s first solo show in
    the United States, and was also tied to the rise of private
    collectors’ interest in his works. This was likely also bolstered by
    the success of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel the Moon and
    Sixpence, based on the artist’s life, in 1919. It is likely that the
    wider public had an interest in Gauguin’s Tahitian pictures,
    /
    since critics from American Art News and the New York Herald
    since critics from American Art News and the New York Herald
    warned readers that the works on view predated the artist’s
    Tahitian phase. Other critics observed that de Zayas was merely
    taking advantage of the rising market for Gauguin’s works in
    the United States. According to de Zayas, however, he had
    intended to exhibit works by Gauguin and Van Gogh in his first
    gallery as early as 1915.  

    Paul Gauguin, Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin. Courtesy Hammer


    Museum, UCLA. Wikicommons.

    Susan Alyson Stein has traced several of the works on view at De


    Zayas’ gallery, most of which were first exhibited publicly at the
    Galerie Barbazanges in Paris. These include Self-Portrait with
    Halo, Portrait of Meyer de Haan, Caribbean Woman, Still Life
    “Ripipoint”, Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin, and View of Pont-Aven /
    Ripipoint , Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin, and View of Pont Aven
    near Lézavan. Although only Caribbean Woman seems to
    suggest the artist’s eventual shift to an exotic primitivism,
    several of these works incorporated elements Gauguin and his
    contemporaries took from Japanese prints. Moreover, most of
    the works on view were created during his stay in Brittany,
    where his depictions of this region’s natural landscapes and
    peasant population anticipated his escape to Tahiti. Specifically,
    Caribbean Woman, from 1889, appears to have been inspired by
    a photograph of a Javanase temple that the artist had seen the
    previous year at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. This painting
    was sold by de Zayas to John Quinn and was exhibited at the
    Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1921 alongside other
    Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works.

    Marius de Zayas Gallery, New York. Exhibition of Paintings by Paul


    Gauguin, 1920, no. 2 (titled Caribbean Woman and Sunflowers). Sothebys.

    De Zayas’ exhibit of Gauguin’s work was part of an ongoing /


    project to introduce the history of French modernism to New
    York audiences. The De Zayas gallery also held solo exhibits of
    American artists: Arthur B. Davies, Walt Kuhn, John Covert, and
    Charles Sheeler. Unfortunately, de Zayas’ memoirs do not
    discuss his activities related to this gallery. This is likely due to
    the fact that de Zayas had difficulty selling the works he
    exhibited and was unable to engage the public, as he wrote to
    Stieglitz in 1922. After the gallery closed, de Zayas moved to
    Paris, and despite his disillusionment with the American public,
    he continued to organize exhibitions in New York during the
    twenties.

    Paul Gauguin, Self-Portrait With Halo and Snake, 1889.


    Wikicommons.

    While de Zayas remains a key figure for understanding /


    mainstream American modernism and the reception of
    European modernism, his interest in African art and modernist
    primitivism was also key for the development of the Harlem
    Renaissance and African-American art in general. For instance,
    Alain Locke’s writings on African art from 1924 and 1925 were
    indebted to de Zayas’ exhibits and writings. Much like the
    Mexican writer, Locke emphasized the important influence
    African art had on European modernists, and he suggested that
    African-American artists study African sculpture so as to avoid
    imitating academic naturalism. 

    Sources:

    M a ri u s D e Z aya s , H ow, W h e n , A n d W hy M o d e rn A r t
    C a m e To N e w Yo r k . C a m b r i d g e : T h e M I T P r e s s , 1 9 9 6 .

    Patricia Hills, Painting Harlem Modern: The Art Of


    Jacob Lawrence. Berkely And Los Angeles:
    University Of California Press, 2019.  

    Colta Feller Ives, Susan Alyson Stein, Charlotte


    H a l e , A n d M a r j o ri e S h e l l ey, T h e Lu re O f T h e Exo t i c :
    G a u g u i n I n N e w Yo r k C o l l e c t i o n s . M e t r o p o l i t a n
    M u s e u m O f A r t : N e w Yo r k , 2 0 0 2 .

    WRITTEN BY MARIANA AGUIRRE


    (http://www.esteticas.unam.mx/mariana_aguirre), APRIL 5, 1920.

    Mariana Aguirre is an art historian specializing in Italian


    modernism and modernist primitivism. She is currently a
    Research Professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas
    (UNAM), in Mexico City.

    Tags: Marius de Zayas, Paul Gauguin, galleries, art, paintings,


    modernism, avant-garde, Latinx, French, Alfred Steiglitz

    /
    Copyright © 2019-2020 New York 1920, 100 Years Ago Today. All Rights Reserved. Sponsored by New
    York Institute of Technology.

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    (https://nyit.edu)

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