Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848 - May 8, 1903)

"Art is either plagiarism or  revolution."

- Paul Gauguin

Self-Portrait

Paul Gauguin is one of the best French painters of the Post Impressionist period. He gained much recognition for developing a conceptual method for representation of subjects – colorful, vibrant, almost cruel, and lacking emotions in general.

Paul Gauguin, born in Paris, was the only son of Clovis Gauguin, a firebrand republican journalist in France and a writer mother. Due to his father’s political activities, the family was forced to go into exile in 1849. During the journey, Gauguin’s father passed away and the family decided to stay in Lima for the next four years. The years in Lima left a deep impact on the artist.

After six years in French merchant navy (1865 -1871), Gauguin settled down with his wealthy guardian, Gustave Arosa, who was a huge art collector. This period was pivotal in Gauguin’s life, because he recognized his desire to be artist.

In 1882, after a successful stint as a stockbroker, Gauguin turned to painting full-time with the help of his friend and an Impressionist painter, Camille Pissaro.

Paul Gauguin paintings are a mix of broken and rhythmic brush strokes and use of texture and color that reflect his deep interest in the art and technique of the Impressionists. In 1887, Gauguin decided to leave France and head to Panama along with fellow painter Charles Laval. But, in early 1888, he returned to Brittany and with Theo VanGogh’s support, began painting with renewed confidence. Soon, he began painting original interpretations of life in Brittany.

Paul Gauguin’s earliest masterpieces include ‘Visions after the Sermon’ (1888) and ‘Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?’ (1897-98), and this was also the time when he became part of the Impressionist movement. So inspired was he by the era of Impressionism that he spent money buying works of artists such as Manet, Sisley, Renoir, and Monet.

Paul Gauguin paintings all have the appearance of a time of flight away from civilization, in search of new ways to love. Paul Gauguin paintings also evoke, at times primitive, at times realistic, and almost always, sincere feelings in the viewers. He was a radical in his own life. Struggling to come to terms with the ways of a solid middle-class world, abandoning his wife (she moved back to Denmark with their five children) and family, his career to pursue his passion – painting, refusal to accept praise, gains, or glory for his works are some of the more fascinating and tragic aspects of his life.

Many of Paul Gauguin paintings depict life in Tahiti in a realistic manner; painting primitive art, with two dimensional forms and violent colors that depict the gay abandon of untamed nature at her best. Paul Gauguin painted ‘Two Women on the Beach’ (1891) shortly after he traveled to Tahiti for the first time. He came back to the place again in 1895 and remained here until his death.

Paul Gauguin’s artistic sentimentalities gave birth to a movement called Symbolism by Jean Moreas and explained as “trend of the creative in spirit of art.” Gauguin’s art can be best described as having the ability ‘to clothe an idea in a visible form.’

After all, Paul Gauguin paintings are statements of depicting his outer world in a way that interprets his inner dreams by symbolic representation using decorative forms such as lines and colors.

"In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters." – Paul Gauguin