Auckland Art Gallery to Receive Gift Paintings by Picasso, Cezanne, and Matisse

Written by rubin Friday, 08 May 2009 21:18

AUCKLAND CITY, NZ - Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki today announced a promised gift of 15 works of art to the gallery through its Foundation – including well-known paintings by Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and Piet Mondrian – the largest gift ever made to an art museum in Australasia. The gift, from New York art collectors and philanthropists Julian and Josie Robertson, represents some of the major European artists of the modern era, dating from the late 19th to mid 20th centuries. Its art historical and cultural value places it among the most generous philanthropic acts in New Zealand history.

The gift is drawn from a private collection that largely focuses on modernist works. While frequently called on to lend to art museums, this is the first time the Robertsons have gifted work. Selected by the gallery’s director, the effect of the gift will be far-reaching, transforming Auckland’s ability to tell the story of modern art.

In 2006, the Auckland Art Gallery organised an exhibition of 12 works from the Julian and Josie Robertson collection, also shown at Te Papa in Wellington. Six of those works are included in the gift. The overwhelming response to that exhibition, much of it from young visitors, had a profound and lasting effect on the Robertsons.

The Robertsons said, “We have had a lifelong love affair with New Zealand. We love Auckland. And we love these pictures. That’s why we were so pleased when we brought these works to New Zealand that New Zealanders seemed to enjoy them as much as we do. Frankly, bringing the pictures was probably the most appreciated thing we have ever done. We are delighted to be able to make this gift."

Now, visitors will be travelling to Auckland to witness a collection of a size and importance of international quality. The city will honour and cherish this collection in perpetuity, displaying it for thousands of visitors each year in our magnificent refurbished Art Gallery.”

Gallery director Chris Saines said, “We are thrilled to receive this truly astonishing gift. It represents many of the major artists who attended the birth of modernism, their works illustrating the history of European art at one of its most crucial turning points. In every sense of the term, this is a textbook collection – Modern Art History 101.

For the first time in its 121-year history, the gallery will be able to provide continuous access to a persuasive story of modern art at one of its most transformational moments, seen through the eyes of many of its major figures. The Robertson gift generously lifts our collections’ horizon and we are simply delighted with this news.”

The Julian and Josie Robertson gift comes at an important time for the gallery as it undertakes the development of a world-class building, due to open in April 2011. Auckland City Council is driving this ambitious $113 million heritage refurbishment and expansion, which will more than double the scale of the previous visitor experience. It has major funding partner support from central government and the Auckland Art Gallery Foundation.  

The Julian and Josie Robertson Gift

Central to the collection is a work of 1875-76 by Paul Cézanne, the father of modern art, and an early (1911) ‘analytic’ and a late (1938) ‘synthetic’ cubist work by Georges Braque, one of the principal inheritors of Cézanne’s revolutionary style. Cézanne sought to return a sense of ‘the permanent’ to painting; ‘the art of the museum’, beyond the fleeting world of impressionism.

Pablo Picasso, co-inventor of cubism with Braque, is represented by a surrealist-inspired study (1938) of Dora Maar, the photographer who documented his 1937 anti-war mural Guernica, together with a group portrait (1951) of a later lover François Gilot and their two children Claude and Paloma. An important Salvador Dalí (1933-34) further epitomizes the surrealist spirit.

The great colourist and draughtsman Henri Matisse is represented by three works; a decoratively elegant study of a young model in Spanish costume, painted in Nice (1921); the 24 pochoir sheet Jazz series (1947), arguably the world’s most recognized artist’s book; and a gouache-painted paper cut-out (ca 1949-50), seen in the 2006 Robertson collection exhibition.

Other works include an early impressionist-inspired landscape (1884) by Paul Gauguin, almost a decade before his stop-over in Auckland (with visits to its gallery and museum) en route to Tahiti; a coastal landscape (1906) painted in a riot of primary colour by André Derain, one of the Fauve group; and a Henri Fantin-Latour still-life (1875), a work of lucid and refined naturalism.

The remaining paintings include a small and rare study in gouache on paper (ca 1920) by the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, a work in which geometric abstraction takes its purest form; an intimately scaled still-life (ca 1930) by Pierre Bonnard; and a late cubist work by Fernand Léger (1918), a ’mechanical’ picture for a new machine age.

The 15 works have been astutely collected, with a close interest in how each new work builds on the last. Together, they form a compelling narrative on the shifting approaches and forms of modern art at one of the most pivotal and revolutionary moments in art history, which the critic and writer Robert Hughes characterised as ‘The Shock of the New’.

Visit Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki at : http://www.aucklandartgallery.govt.nz/

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