Paul Gauguin was born on June 7, in 1848, in Paris. He was a leading Post-Impressionist French painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He spent his childhood in Lima (his mother was a Peruvian Creole). From 1872 to 1883 he was a successful stockbroker in Paris. He met Camille Pissarro about 1875, and he exhibited several times with the Impressionists. Disillusioned with bourgeois materialism, in 1886 he moved to Pont-Aven, Brittany, where he became the central figure of a group of artists known as the Pont-Aven school. 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. 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 nontraditional subject matter. Increasingly focused on rejecting the materialism of contemporary culture in favour of a more spiritual, unfettered lifestyle, in 1891 he moved to Tahiti. His works became open protests against materialism. He was an influential innovator; Fauvism owed much to his use of colour, and he inspired Pablo Picasso and the development of Cubism. Gauguin died on May 8, 1903, in Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia.
Here are some interesting facts about Paul Gauguin:
ReplyDeleteHis family left France for exile in Peru. His parents were opponents of the regime of Louis Napoleon.
227 of Gauguin’s works were shown at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1906.
Gauguin’s life inspired the novel, The Moon and Sixpence, by Somerset Maugham and the opera, of the same title, by John L Gardner.
Along with the five children from his marriage to Mette Sophia Gad, Gauguin had five additional illegitimate children from four different affairs.
Gauguin showed works in galleries managed by art dealer Theo Van Gogh.
Along with painting Gauguin also worked in various forms of sculpture, largely clay and wood.
From the age of 3-7 Gauguin lived in Peru with his mother, his father had died on the trip there. Later he returned to France.
No original paintings by Gauguin remain in French Polynesia.
There is a luxury ship named Paul Gauguin.
As this painer was connected with Vincent Willem van Gogh,who is one of my favourite painters, it was very interesting for me to read some information about Paul Gauguin.
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