Paul Gauguin

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin ( Paris , June 7th 1848 - Atuona in the Marquesas , May 9 1903 ) was a French painter . His work is usually characterized as post-impressionist, that after 1891 as symbolic .

Content

 * 1 Life
 * 2 Painting style
 * 3 Paintings
 * 4 Museums (selection)
 * 5 Exhibitions (selection)
 * 6 Gallery
 * 7 Self-Portraits
 * 8 External links

Life
After his education in Orléans Gauguin spent six years in the merchant navy. Later he served in the French navy. On returning to France in 1870 he was an assistant at a stockbroker. Gustave Arosa, which Gauguin's guardian was when he lost his mother at the age of 19, brought him into contact with the painting. Same Arosa had helped him to his job at the Navy and later at the bank. Arosa is a key figure in the life of Gauguin, because he also indirectly have a major impact would be on the art of Gauguin.This also had to do with the fact that Arosa had a great love for amateur photography and was good friends with Nadar, who has captured images as reproductions of the major monuments in the world, as Trajan's Column and the Parthenon.

Gauguin married in November 1873 with the Danish Mette Sophie Gad, by whom he had five children. He was a successful stockbroker and was also an art collector and, as you can see now, very good amateur painter who worked in impressionist style.

In 1882 the stock market crashed and Gauguin lost his job. By 1884 Gauguin moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he was less successful in a career as a representative of a French textile manufacturer. However, he would prefer to go full-time painting and therefore went back to Paris in 1885, after the failure of an exhibition of his work in Denmark. He did his wife and children not properly maintained so that his wife went back to her family.

La Vision après le Sermon (Jacob La Lutte avec l'Ange) (1888)

Gauguin lived, at the initiative of Theo van Gogh, brother of Vincent, two months with Vincent van Gogh in Arles to paint and learn from each other. It was not a happy period. Gauguin had bouts of depression and attempted suicide. From the letters of Van Gogh - Gauguin financially supported - shows that they constantly fought. At a time Gauguin was so shocked by the behavior of his roommate, who chased him during an evening stroll, that he spent a night in a hotel. The next morning, Van Gogh had cut off part of his ear. Then Van Gogh was admitted to a mental hospital and Gauguin left Arles. German scientists argue, however, after a lengthy investigation, Gauguin, Van Gogh's ear chopped off with a sword, after an argument. They would themselves have chosen to keep the facts secret. Gauguin did this to avoid persecution. [1] [2] .

There are paintings by Gauguin and Van Gogh who look like they are painted with the same paint. They also made portraits of each other. In 1886 came Gauguin, Emile Bernard and Paul Sérusier in Pont-Aven . They founded there the Pont-Aven School on. That group also included the Dutch painter Meijer de Haan, with whom he became friends and he has repeatedly portrayed. In 1891, Gauguin went to French Polynesia to escape European civilization and "everything that was artificial and conventional." He had this picture of the "noble savages" in mind (as described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau ) and wanted to rebel against bourgeois society. Perhaps, however, also played a role that he received little recognition in France as an artist. He first stayed in Tahiti, which fell against him as he continued quickly went to the Marquesas . From there, he only visited once France. He lived here with Paou'óura, with whom he had a son, Emile, born in 1899.

Paul Gauguin died at the age of 54 in 1903, sick with syphilis and heart attacks . He is buried in the cemetery in Atuona , Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands.

[Painting style edit ]
Tahitian Women on the Beach(1891)

Gauguin's grave

Paul Gauguin: Manao Tupapau, the killing of the mind is watching

The works of Gauguin belong to the post-impressionism . His work anticipates the unusual colors of the Fauves and the Expressionists .

After 1888, Gauguin considers himself a symbolist . The art of the Impressionists Gauguin satisfied, because he mainly wanted to show invisible, the mood and feelings behind the image. Besides oil paintings Gauguin also made ​​a lot of graphics, such as woodcuts, the wildness, the immediacy addressed him.

After first having connected with the Impressionists, Gauguin began during his time in Brittany to develop his own style. He painted the women in traditional dress in a very tranquil and concentrated style, especially the peace and simplicity of rural life seems to display.

His own style in that period indicates Gauguin to the term cloisonism, a word derived from the medieval technique of enameling, the cloissoné where the patches enamel are separated by metal edges. Around almost all the figures from this time, and usually in the later paintings, until the end of his life, are painted dark borders.

In the period in Brittany Gauguin also painted religious scenes, including the fabric Vision After the Sermon (also called Jacob with the angel) from 1888. This painting shows a combination of praying Breton women with their white hats and Jacob firmly by the angel is grasped, all at an extremely bold bright red background, with between the women and the angel a sturdy tree, diagonally across the canvas.

After moving to the tropics Gauguin reached the tops of his career, even though he appears to be a fighter and a maker amok. The beautiful colors, the penetrating gaze of the Polynesian women who willingly posed for him, and the mysterious titles of the paintings are for lovers of Gauguin's work a pleasure. An example is the large painting (375x139 cm) with the text: D'où venons-nous Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? (Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?). In this painting are a dozen near life-sized people, surrounded by magical plants, animals and symbols from the Polynesian religion.

[Paintings edit ]
Nafea Faa Ipoipo?
 * Among the Mangoes, 1887, Oil on canvas, 89 x 116 cm [3]
 * Portrait of Van Gogh painting sunflowers, 1888, Oil on canvas, 73 x 91 cm [4]
 * The Seed of the Areoi, 1892. Oil on burlap, 36 1/4 x 28 3/8 "(92.1 x 72.1 cm) [5]
 * The Moon and the Earth, 1893. Oil on burlap, 45 x 24 1/2 "(114.3 x 62.2 cm) [6]
 * Vision After the Sermon or Jacob (in combat) with the angel
 * Sunflower painter
 * To Poipoi (in 2007, an amount of $ 39.2 million paid for this painting [7] )
 * Nafea Faa Ipoipo? ("When will you marry?"), 101 x 77 cm, was sold by the family of Rudolf Staechelin an unknown buyer, probably Qatar Museums, in February 2015 at a cost of approximately $ 300 million. [8 ]

Museums (selection) [ edit ]
The works of Paul Gauguin can be seen in, among other things:
 * Musee d'Orsay ( Paris ) [9]
 * Metropolitan Museum of Art [10] [11] and Museum of Modern Art ( New York )
 * National Gallery of Art in Washington [12]
 * Guggenheim
 * National Gallery (Prague) in Prague

Exhibitions (selection) [ edit ]

 * Paul Gauguin: Paris, 1889 at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland [13] of October 4, 2009 t / m January 18, 2010 [14]
 * Gauguin The breakthrough into modernity. [15] at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from 19 February to 6 June 2010
 * Paul Gauguin at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo [16] of the July 3rd / m September 23, 2009
 * Gauguin at the Tate Modern [17] on 30 September 2010 t / m 16 January 2011