Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848 - May 9, 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist painter. His bold experimentation with coloring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art.

Related Topics:
June 7 - 1848 - May 9 - 1903 - Post-Impressionist - Synthetist - Modern art

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Born in Paris, France, he descended from Spanish settlers in South America and the viceroy of Peru, and spent his early childhood in Lima. He was the grandson of Flora Tristan, a founder of modern feminism. After his education in Orléans, France, Gauguin spent six years sailing around the world in the merchant marines and then in the French navy. Upon his return to France in 1870, he took a job as a broker's assistant. His guardian Gustave Arosa, a successful businessman and art collector, introduced Gauguin to Camille Pissarro in 1875.

Related Topics:
Paris - France - Spanish - South America - Peru - Lima - Flora Tristan - Feminism - Orléans - Merchant marine - 1870 - Camille Pissarro - 1875

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A successful stockbroker during week-days, Gauguin spent holidays painting with Pissarro and Cezanne. Although his first efforts were clumsy, he made visible progress. By 1884 Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he unsuccessfully pursued a business career. Driven to paint full-time, he returned to Paris in 1885, leaving his family in Denmark. Without adequate subsistence, his wife and children returned to her family.

Related Topics:
Cezanne - 1884 - Copenhagen - 1885 - Denmark

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Like his friend Vincent Van Gogh, with whom he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin experienced bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. Disappointed with Impressionism, he felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour.

Related Topics:
Vincent Van Gogh - Arles - Impressionism - Africa - Asia

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Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards the manner he called Cloisonnism. In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour — he dispensed with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting.

Related Topics:
Folk art - Japanese prints - Cloisonnism - The Yellow Christ - 1889 - Renaissance

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In 1891, Gauguin, frustrated by lack of recognition at home and financially destitute, sailed to the tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional." He remained first in Tahiti and later in the Marquesas Islands for most of the rest of his life, returning to France only once. His works of that period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and an exoticized view of the inhabitants of Polynesia.

Related Topics:
1891 - Tahiti - Marquesas

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He is buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.

Related Topics:
Calvary Cemetery - Atuona - Hiva ‘Oa - Marquesas Islands - French Polynesia

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