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Biographical Information:
The French Post-Impressionist painter worked until the financial crash in 1883 as a prosperous stockbrocker in Paris and Copenhagen. At the age of 35 he abandoned his business career, separated from his family and took up painting full-time.
Gauguin's early painting is reminiscent of Pissarro while he was under the influence of the Barbizon painters. In the early 1880's Gauguin broadened his stroke, giving the paintings a tremulous rhythmic character. But he was financially unsuccessful with his pictures and left his family in Copenhagen to live in poverty in Paris. He traveled to Panama and Martinique and in 1888 met Emile Bernard in Brittany which whom he developed the art movement called "Synthesism" or "Symbolism". Like all Post-Impressionist artists he passed through an Impressionist phase but became dissatisfied with the limitations of the style and advanced beyond it. Symbolism was a reaction to Courbet's Realism and came out of an urge to extend Impressionism by seeking new expressive powers. The Symbolists argued for an art that had the same eloquence, directness and universality as a symbol, that concentrated syntheses of impressions, ideas and experiences. Gauguin used intense, unnatural color without any indication of a light source in the scene. ("Jacob Wrestling with the Angel", 1888). He believed that western industrial society had faced mankind into an incomplete materialistic life while their emotions lay neglected. He left Paris to live among the peasants of Brittany in Western France where he noticed that religion was still a large part of their lives. He painted pictures about faith: "The Vision after the Sermon", 1888 is in a style inspired by folk art and medieval stained glass. By now modeling and perspective had given way to fleet, simplified shapes outlined heavily in black with unnatural, brilliant colors.
Two years after moving to the countryside, he sailed to Tahiti in 1891 and lived in a native hut. He spent the rest of his life in the South Pacific and his paintings show the influences of the native art of the South Pacific and other non-European styles. He believed that the renewal of Western art and civilization must come from native cultures. His art took on its final, simplified form with its intensified color and backgrounds reduced to rhythmically curved shapes.
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Artists Works:
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Gauguin, (Eugène-Henri-) Paul
Gauguin, Paul
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...more works by Gauguin, Paul
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Museum Resources:
Chrysler Museum of Art
Phillips Collection
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Commercial Resources:
Ababor L.L.C.
Art Beat Online Gallery
ArtLine (International)
Gauguin, Renior, Modigiani,Giacometti
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In the News:
Corot to Picasso: European Masterworks from the Smith College Museum of Art
Public Programs - Impressionists in Winter
Theo van Gogh
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and Print Collecting: An Early Mission for MoMA
Post-Impressionist Prints: Paris in the 1890s
Public Programs - Impressionists in Winter
Expansion and Renovation of the Van Gogh Museum
Public Programs - Impressionists in Winter
Impressionism Paintings Collected by European Museums
Impressionism: Paintings Collected by European Museums
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Related Information:
Gauguin and the Russian Avantgarde Show
Impressionism and Postimpressionism. Virtual Gallery.
ReNATssance Art
Ross Cherese
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