Paul Gauguin was born on June 7, 1848 in Paris, France. He was a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor who was a “primitive” expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work. His work has been categorized as Post-Impressionist, Synthetist, and Symbolist. His artistic experiments influenced many avant-garde developments in the early 20th century.
His use of bold colors, exaggerated body proportions and stark contrasts in his paintings set him apart from his contemporaries, for the Primitivism art movement. Gauguin’s father was a journalist from Orléans, and his mother was of French and Peruvian descent. At age 17 Gauguin enlisted in the merchant marine, and for six years he sailed around the world. Gauguin’s artistic leanings were first aroused by Arosa, who had a collection that included the work of Camille Corot, Eugène Delacroix, and Jean-François Millet. He soon started painting and received artistic instruction and to frequent a studio where he could draw from a model.
Tahitian Women on the Beach by Paul Gauguin
In 1876 his Landscape at Viroflay was accepted for the official annual exhibition in France, the Salon. He developed a taste for the contemporary avant-garde movement of Impressionism, and between 1876 and 1881 he assembled a personal collection of paintings by such figures as Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, and Johan Barthold Jongkind.
Still Life with Three Puppies by Paul Gauguin
Gauguin met Pissarro about 1874 and began to study under the supportive older artist, at first struggling to master the techniques of painting and drawing. In 1880 he was included in the fifth Impressionist exhibition, an invitation that was repeated in 1881 and 1882. He spent holidays painting with Pissarro and Cézanne and began to make visible progress.
Rue Jouvenet in Rouen by Paul Gauguin
His works painted on Martinique, such as Tropical Vegetation (1887) and By the Sea (1887), reveal his increasing departure from Impressionist technique during this period, as he was now working with blocks of colour in large, unmodulated planes. Gauguin achieved a step towards this ideal in the seminal Vision After the Sermon (1888), a painting in which he used broad planes of colour, clear outlines, and simplified forms.
By the Sea by Paul Gauguin
Gauguin coined the term “Synthetism” to describe his style during this period, referring to the synthesis of his paintings’ formal elements with the idea or emotion they conveyed. Gauguin no longer used line and colour to replicate an actual scene, as he had as an Impressionist, but rather explored the capacity of those pictorial means to induce a particular feeling in the viewer.
Night Cafe, Arles by Paul Gauguin
Late in October 1888 Gauguin traveled to Arles, in the south of France, to stay with Vincent van Gogh. The style of the two men’s work from this period has been classified as Post-Impressionist because it shows an individual, personal development of Impressionism’s use of colour, brushstroke, and non-traditional subject matter.
The Painter of Sunflowers by Paul Gauguin
Gauguin then left for Paris after a stay of only two months with Vincent van Gogh. For the next several years, Gauguin alternated between living in Paris and Brittany. In Paris met circles of Symbolist poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine. In a famous essay in the Mercure de France in 1891, the critic Albert Aurier declared Gauguin to be the leader of a group of Symbolist artists, and he defined his work as “ideational, symbolic, synthetic, subjective, and decorative.”
Breton Girls Dancing, Pont-Aven by Paul Gauguin
In 1893, Gauguin returned to France to show some off his Tahitian pieces. The response to his artwork was mixed, and he failed to sell much. Critics and art buyers didn't know what to make his primitivist style. Before long, Gauguin returned to French Polynesia. He continued to paint during this time, creating one of his later masterpieces—the canvas painting "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" is Gauguin's depiction of the human life cycle.
Vision after the Sermon by Paul Gauguin
Gauguin’s innovations inspired a whole generation of artists. In 1889–90 many of the young followers who had gathered around him at Pont-Aven utilized Gauguin’s ideas to form the Nabis group.
Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake by Paul Gauguin
The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch owed much to Gauguin’s use of line, and the painters of the Fauve group—Henri Matisse in particular—profited from his use of colour in their own daring compositions.Gauguin’s use of Oceanic iconography and his stylistic simplifications greatly affected the young Pablo Picasso, inspiring his own appreciation of African art and hence the evolution of Cubism. Gauguin helped open the door to the development of 20th-century art.
References:
Paul Gauguin - Wikipedia
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