Paul Gauguin
Along with his contemporaries Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin was a pioneer of modernist art. His use of expressive colors, flat planes, and simplified, distorted forms in paintings, as well as a rough, semi-abstract aesthetic in sculptures and woodcuts, exerted a profound influence on avant-garde artists in the early 20th century, from Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso to the German Expressionists.
Gauguin, who had no formal artistic training, led a peripatetic life, settling for extended periods in different parts of the world, including, most famously, Tahiti. He was born in Paris but spent his early childhood in Lima, Peru, where his mother had relatives. His attachment to Peru helped stoke a lifelong desire to travel and to self-identify as a “savage,” a term encapsulating his idealizing and derogatory view of the non-Western peoples and cultures by which he was influenced. As a young man, he worked on the stock exchange in Paris and painted in his spare time. Between 1879 and 1886 he exhibited with the Impressionists, but he subsequently aligned himself with the nascent Symbolist movement, which prioritized inner feelings and oblique evocations over the visual effects of light in nature. In 1882, after losing his job during the French stock market collapse, he pursued painting as a full-time career.
In 1891, Gauguin left France for Tahiti, which had long loomed large in his imagination as a paradise unspoiled by European social mores. There he created luminous paintings and small, totem-like wood sculptures that he described as “ultra-savage.” These works, including Hina Tefatou (The Moon and the Earth) (1893), were not so much a depiction of what he saw there as an idealized projection of what he had hoped he might find. The artist returned to France in 1893, but, disappointed with the response to his Tahitian-themed paintings, he left permanently in 1895 and made his second voyage to Tahiti. In 1901 he moved to the remote Marquesas Islands, where he died in 1903.
More than any other major artist of his generation, Gauguin drew inspiration from working across multiple mediums. In addition to painting, he was at various moments intensely engaged with ceramics, woodcarving, lithography, woodcut, monotype, and transfer drawing. In woodcuts such as Te Atua (The Gods) (1893–94), he combined the bold gouging of his carved wood sculptures with glowing, evocative color. He used oil transfer drawing—a hybrid of drawing and printmaking that he invented—to make large, highly finished compositions such as Tahitian Woman with Evil Spirit (c. 1900). With these forays into printmaking, Gauguin capitalized on the subtle abstractions of printing to impart a mysterious, dreamlike quality to his images.
Introduction by Starr Figura, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, 2016
- Introduction
- Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (UK: , US: ; French: [ø.ʒɛn ɑ̃.ʁi pɔl ɡo.ɡɛ̃]; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism. Toward the end of his life, he spent ten years in French Polynesia. The paintings from this time depict people or landscapes from that region. His work was influential on the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and he is well known for his relationship with Vincent and Theo van Gogh. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career and assisted in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris.Gauguin was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way for Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.
- Wikidata
- Q37693
- Introduction
- He was one of the leading French painters of the Postimpressionist period. He is noted for his imaginative subjects and expressive use of color, in attempts to capture a more primitive emotion in his works. He professed an appreciation of exotic peoples, whom he believed to be innocent of modern civilization's woes. French painter and printmaker.
- Nationality
- French
- Gender
- Male
- Roles
- Artist, Ceramicist, History Artist, Painter, Sculptor
- Names
- Paul Gauguin, Eugène-Henri-Paul Gauguin, Paul Gaugin, Eugene-Henri Gauguin, Polʹ Gogen, Kao-keng, Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, Gauguin, Pablo Gauguin, p. gauguin, gauguin paul, P. gaugin
- Ulan
- 500011421
Exhibitions
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501: 19th-Century Innovators
Ongoing
MoMA
Collection gallery
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Gauguin: Metamorphoses
Mar 8–Jun 8, 2014
MoMA
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Painting and Sculpture Changes 2013
Jan 1–Dec 31, 2013
MoMA
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The Modern Myth: Drawing Mythologies in Modern Times
Mar 10–Aug 30, 2010
MoMA
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Cezanne to Picasso: Paintings from the David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection
Jul 17–Aug 31, 2009
MoMA
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Paul Gauguin has
101 exhibitionsonline.
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Paul Gauguin Still Life with Three Puppies 1888
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Paul Gauguin Washerwomen Arles 1888
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Paul Gauguin Pastoral in Martinique (Pastorales Martinique) 1889, published 1894
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Paul Gauguin Portrait of Meijer de Haan 1889
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Paul Gauguin The Tragedies of the Sea, Brittany (Les Drames de la mer Bretagne) 1889
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Paul Gauguin Portrait of Meijer de Haan 1889
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Paul Gauguin Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé 1891
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Paul Gauguin The Seed of the Areoi 1892
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Paul Gauguin The Moon and the Earth 1893
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Paul Gauguin Auti te Pape (Women at the River) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1894, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin The Nourishment of the Gods (Mahana Atua) 1894, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin The Spirit of Evil is Speaking (Mahna no varua ino) 1894, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin Manao tupapau (Watched by the Spirit of the Dead) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1894, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin Maruru (Offerings of Gratitude) 1893-94, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin Wonderful Earth (Nave Nave Fenua) 1894, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1893–94
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Paul Gauguin Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1894, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin Te Atua (The Gods) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1893–94
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Paul Gauguin The Creation of the Universe(L'Univers est crée) 1894, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin Manao tupapau (Watched by the Spirit of the Dead) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1894, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin Te faruru (Here We Make Love) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1893–94
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Paul Gauguin Te Atua (The Gods) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1893–94
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Paul Gauguin Watched by the Spirit of the Dead (Manao Tupapau) from the portfolio L'Estampe originale, no. VI 1894
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Paul Gauguin Auti te pape (Women at the River) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1893–1894
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Paul Gauguin Nave nave fenua (Delightful Land) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1893–94
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Paul Gauguin L'Univers est crée (The Creation of the Universe) from Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1893–94
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Paul Gauguin Manao tupapau (Watched by the Spirits of the Dead), state IV, from the suite Noa Noa (Fragrant Scent) 1893–94
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Paul Gauguin Night Eternal (Te Po) 1894, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin The Smile (Le Sourire) 1899, printed 1921
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Paul Gauguin The Rape of Europa (L'Enlèvement d'Europe) 1898-99, printed 1928
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Paul Gauguin Tahitian Landscape 1899
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Paul Gauguin Change of Residence (Changement de résidence) 1901–02
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Paul Gauguin Human Misery (Misères humaines) c. 1898-99
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Paul Gauguin Tahitian Woman with Evil Spirit c. 1900
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