The screenprints of the ALLO! suite go back to a series of six paintings that were shown for the first time in the House of the Croatian Artists, Zagreb, in 2012. The cycle of paintings comprises six canvases, three of which have been selected for the edition.
The inspiration came from the final minutes of the film The Moon and Sixpence, which tells the story of Charles Strickland (played by the British actor George Sanders), a middle-aged stockbroker who turns his back on his family and middle-class life and sets out for Tahiti to paint there. The film is based on the novel of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham and clearly alludes to the life of Gauguin.
Tuymans chooses the moment in the film when Strickland’s physician has travelled from London to Tahiti to pay him a visit. By now, however, Strickland is already dead. When the physician enters the painter’s cabin, the film changes from black-and-white to Technicolor. Tuymans made screenshots of this Gauguin Revisited. The photographer’s reflection (that of Tuymans himself) is clearly visible in the scene of the physician standing in front of the dead artist’s monumental paintings. This ghostly reflection adds an enigmatic dimension.