Nafea faa ipoipo
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Nafea faa ipoipo (short title Nafea , alternative spelling NAFEA , German title When you marry?, French title Quand te maries-tu? ) Is a painting by Paul Gauguin from 1892. The work that was created during the painter's first stay in Tahiti shows two women in a South Seas landscape. It is painted in oil on canvas and has a height of 101.5 cm and a width of 77.5 cm. For many decades the picture hung on loan from a private collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel . In 2015, the previous owners sold the painting for an unknown price. There was speculation in the media about a sale of 300 million US dollars. By 2015, this would be the highest price ever paid for a work of art.
Image description
The picture shows two women from Tahiti in front of a hilly landscape. The two Polynesians crouch close together on the ground. The woman in front takes a complicated pose. She has placed her body weight on the bent right leg, while the also bent left leg serves as a support in front of her. She finds additional support through the right arm stretched backwards with the hand resting on the floor. The left arm is also bent. With her left hand the woman reaches for the left strap of the white vest. The camisole, which contrasts with the woman's brown skin, leaves both arms bare and has a large neckline in the area of the cleavage . The legs are covered by a red skirt, which is decorated with yellowish patterns. Bare feet peek out from below the skirt. The woman's face, which is slightly inclined to one side, looks like a mask, especially due to the rather angular painted nose. While the eyebrows are painted with thin strokes, the closed wide lips are highlighted with red paint. Her close-fitting black hair is combed into a center part. On the left side she wears a white flower in her hair as an ornament. This flower can be read as a symbol of innocence. The woman looks to the right edge of the picture and fixes a point outside the painting.
The second woman has taken a seat behind the first woman. She differs in many details from the woman sitting in front of her. She wears a high-necked pink dress with long sleeves. A white attached collar closes the dress at the neck. Since the dress almost completely covers the body, its posture cannot be clearly determined. She may be sitting cross- legged , but a kneeling position is also possible. Her complexion is significantly darker than the complexion of the woman in front of her. Her gaze goes to the left edge of the picture, her nose shows modeled curves and her lips are not made up. It also has a middle part. Her long black hair falls down behind her shoulder. A curly strand and also a white flower can be seen on her right side. Her right hand, which protrudes behind the left upper arm of the woman sitting in front of her, is striking. With an outstretched index finger, she makes a symbolic gesture.
The landscape is staggered into several areas one behind the other. In the foreground there is a green lawn on which there is a red-brown stone or a fruit in the lower left corner of the picture. The painter then signed the picture “P. Gauguin 92 “signed and dated. The title “NAFEA Faa ipoipo” is also written below the right foot of the woman sitting in front. The woman in front crouches at the transition from the lawn in front to an ocher-colored area behind it, which could be sand. This area extends to a blue body of water in the center of the picture. On the right edge of the picture, two tree trunks protrude from the water to the top of the picture, from which they are cut. Behind the ocher area and the lake there is a grain area in darker yellow. In this field, on the far left, are two people, one dressed in blue and the other in pink. Behind the grain field on the left side there are areas in different shades of green and in between a gray area with an upturned tip. This could be two leafy trees and the roof of a hut. The landscape is rounded off by a mountain range painted in shades of blue, which slopes slightly to the right from the left edge of the picture. Behind it, on the right edge of the picture, a steep mountain can be seen. A sky painted in bright yellow tones shines over the mountains.
Background to the creation of the painting
The painting Nafea faa ipoipo was created during Gauguin's first stay in Tahiti , which lasted from 1891 to 1893. A second stay followed from 1895. He had come to Tahiti in the hope of finding an exotic paradise there. He had previously looked in vain for a simple and original life in Brittany , the Caribbean and Provence . In Tahiti, too, Gauguin's disappointment was initially great. The capital Papeete was a French colonial city and the original inhabitants had already lost much of their own culture through Christianization and other western influences. Even the colorful dresses of the women seen in the painting Nafea faa ipoipo were imports from Europe. In his search for an original world, Gauguin followed his example Eugène Delacroix , who, fascinated by the world of the Orient, had traveled to North Africa. In his painting The Women of Algiers from 1834 the model for the posture of the woman seated in front can be found in Gauguin's picture Nafea faa ipoipo .
The young woman in Gauguin's Crouching Girl from Tahiti assumes the same posture . This study, drawn with charcoal and pastel paint, also dates from 1892 and may be a preliminary work for the painting Nafea faa ipoipo . The crouching woman appears in Gauguin's other pictures, where she can be seen in the background , as in E Haere oe i hia (Where are you going?) From 1892 and Ea Haere ia oe (Go!) From 1893. In Aha oe feii (Are you jealous?) From 1892 Gauguin shows an undressed woman in the same posture.
Paul Gauguin:
Crouching Girl from Tahiti , 1892,
Art Institute of Chicago
Paul Gauguin:
E Haere oe i hia (Where are you going?) , 1892,
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Paul Gauguin:
Ea Haere ia oe (Go!) , 1893,
Ermitage, Sankt Peterburg
Paul Gauguin:
Aha oe feii (Are you jealous?) , 1892,
Pushkin Museum, Moscow
For several of the pictures taken in Tahiti, Gauguin chose picture titles in the Tahitian language , which underline the exoticism of the motif. The title Nafea faa ipoipo is not only a mystery because of the foreign language. When asked when are you getting married? It remains open who is asking this question and to whom it is addressed. It is conceivable that the woman behind, possibly older, directs this question to the woman seated in front of her. The question can just as well be directed by one of the women to the viewer or vice versa. Such unanswered questions can also be found in picture titles such as Where are you going? or are you jealous? again. The title and motif show an exotic world that Gauguin had dreamed of; they did not represent the real Tahiti that surrounded Gauguin.
Provenance
Gauguin brought the painting to Paris in 1893 and bought it from the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel for 1,500 francs. The painting, also known as Les deux femmes de Tahiti, was later acquired by the Zurich collector Fritz Meyer-Fierz . In November 1914 he loaned the picture, this time titled Women in Tahiti , for an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich . It is the only picture of the collector that he parted with again. Meyer-Fierz may have been bothered by the too erotic representation.
The Basel collector Rudolf Staechelin was interested in buying the picture, but when it was offered through the Zurich art dealer Wolfensberger, he initially turned it down because of the asking price of 25,000 francs. The Moos gallery in Geneva then offered the picture on April 21, 1917 for CHF 21,000 and then on June 5, 1917 for CHF 18,700. Staechelin negotiated the price down to 18,000 francs and bought the painting. In 1931 he transferred the picture together with his extensive art collection to the Rudolf Staechelin'sche Family Foundation . This was not a non-profit institution, but a private foundation "to secure the material value of my collection for my family as an emergency reserve," as the founder stated. The picture had been on permanent loan at the Kunstmuseum Basel since 1947.
In protest against a new Swiss cultural property law and in order to forestall a ban on the export of the collection, the foundation relocated the collection, including the painting Nafea faa ipoipo, to Fort Worth , Texas, in 1997 . There the collection was shown in the Kimbell Art Museum until 2002 . In the meantime, the foundation was transferred to the Rudolf Staechelin Family Trust , a trust under New York law. From 2002 to 2014 the picture was again on loan at the Basel Art Museum. When this had to be closed for a year due to renovation and work on the new building, the foundation was so angry about the decision to close it that it withdrew the picture and 17 other loans under protest. In 2015, Ruedi Staechelin, a grandson of Rudolf Staechelin, declared that the Rudolf Staechelin Family Trust had sold the picture with effect from January 1, 2016. Staechelin did not want to comment on the price or the buyer. Various media published the assumption that the picture could have been sold to Qatar for 300 million US dollars . In 2015 the picture was shown in a Gauguin exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler . The painting was then shown in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and in the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.
literature
- Dorothy Kosinski, Joachim Pissarro , Maryanne Stevens: From Manet to Gauguin, masterpieces from Swiss private collections. Royal Academy of Arts, London 1995, ISBN 90-5544-064-7 .
- Hans-Joachim Müller: Nafea, the Rudolf Staechelin Collection, Basel. Wiese, Basel 1990, ISBN 3-909158-52-8 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Scott Reyburn, Doreen Carvajal: Gauguin Painting Is Said to Fetch $ 300 million . Article in the New York Times on February 5, 2015.
- ^ A b Raphael Suter: Basel loses the Staechelin art collection. Article in the Basler Zeitung on February 5, 2015.
- ↑ Hans-Joachim Müller: Nafea , p. 155.
- ↑ Hans-Joachim Müller: Nafea , p. 156.
- ↑ Hans-Joachim Müller: Nafea , p. 25.
- ^ Daniel Gerny: Financial crisis in the Basel Art Museum unsettles patrons. www.nzz.ch , September 14, 2017, accessed on September 15, 2017 .
Web links
- Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin Gauguin and the lack of reparation. In: Basler Zeitung, June 17, 2019