Aidan Bennet, managing director of Benefitz, commented that the five by six metre banner took a relatively short time to complete. He says, “The print is a reproduction of an 1875 Monet artwork featuring Camille Monet and a child in the artist’s garden in Argenteuil. We printed it on our new HP Scitex XP5300 grand format printer. Believe it or not, the reproduction was printed to this massive size in 20 minutes.”
HP says that the large-scale reproduction offers children the opportunity to learn about Claude Monet’s painting techniques, as part of Te Papa’s education programme. The banner now hangs in the foyer at Te Papa, heralding its latest display.
Regarded as a major coup for the national museum Te Papa Tongarewa, the exhibition, titled Monet and the Impressionists, runs until May 14. With an estimated value of more than a billion dollars, the exhibition features the most valuable paintings collection ever brought to New Zealand including 27 artworks by Claude Monet, alongside masterpieces by Renoir, Pissaro, Degas, Sisley and Cezanne.
Organisers of the exhibition say it will only run at Te Papa while in New Zealand. They expect large numbers to attend after the exhibition received 221,000 visitors last year in Sydney.
