In 1891, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) left France for Tahiti, seeking in the South Seas a society that was simpler and more elemental than that of his homeland. In Tahiti, he created paintings that express a highly personal mythology. He considered this work created in 1897, at a time of great personal crisis to be his masterpiece and the summation of his ideas . There is also lithography by Henri Matisse (1869-1954) Along with Picasso, Matisse helped to define and influence radical contemporary art in the 20th century. More contemporary are the two lifelong friends and partners, Nicolai Michoutouchkine (1923) and Aloi Pilioko (1935), who just celebrated sixty years of creativity in the Pacific’s with an exhibition at the Tjibou art center of Noumera in New Caledonia.