Paintings of Paul Gauguin as a vivid example of post-impressionism

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Paul Gauguin, full name Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin, was born on June 7, 1848. It is considered one of the largest representatives of post-impressionism along with such artists as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec. The direction of post-impressionism in the visual arts is distinguished by accentuated decorative stylization. Paintings by Paul Gauguin are a vivid example of "island" decorativeness, due to the fact that the artist lived in Tahiti for a long time.

Need

In 1870, Gauguin began to engage in amateur painting. Pretty quickly, he succumbed to the all-consuming style of conditional images with elements of authenticity. Ten years later, the artist already took part in exhibitions of the Impressionists. And since about 1983 he began to paint professionally. However, the paintings of Paul Gauguin were not in demand, and he lived in need. Nevertheless, Paul worked actively, was constantly in search of new forms, the diversity of which accompanied post-impressionism, as well as the expressionism, symbolism and modernity that came to replace it. The artist Gauguin, whose paintings will be sold after his death on the largestauctions of the world, barely making ends meet, but did not let go of the brush, worked day and night to earn a living.

Family

The years of Paul Gauguin's youth and adolescence passed in a family of political outcasts. His father was a journalist and ran a column for political chronicles in the magazine Nacional, which was thoroughly saturated with republican radical ideas. Mother and all her numerous relatives preached utopian socialism. In 1849, the Gauguin family boarded a ship bound for Peru and left France. On the way, the elder Gauguin died of a heart attack. Left without a father, Paul was adopted by a family of relatives on the maternal side and was brought up there until the age of seven. South America with its exotic nature made a strong impression on little Paul, the boy was imbued with the charm of the colorful country of Peru and subsequently invariably felt drawn to the tropics.

Sea travel

However, in 1855, Paul Gauguin, being an eight-year-old child, went with his mother back to France on matters of inheritance left by his father's brother. Mother and son remained in France, Paul began his studies, and his mother Alina opened a sewing workshop. They stayed in Paris to live. When Paul was 17 years old, he joined a long-distance vessel as a pilot's apprentice. For the next six years, young Gauguin will plow the seas and oceans, practically without stepping on the ground. During Paul's sea voyages, his mother dies, leaving him an order in which she advised him to receiveeducation and career. Upon his arrival in Paris in 1872, Gauguin met with a former friend of his mother, Gustave Arosa, who was a businessman and also a collector of paintings. Thanks to his recommendations, Paul was able to get a job as a stockbroker.

Marriage

The young man's life gradually began to improve, a year later he met a Danish girl Sophie Gadon at a party in Gustav's family and married her. The couple had five children, they appeared one after another with an interval of two and a half years. Emile, Alina, Clovis, Jean-Rene and Paul. Soon the formation of Gauguin as an artist began, he acquired a workshop and came to grips with the exciting process of painting. A new name appeared in a large family of French artists - Paul Gauguin. Pictures, the description of which caused some difficulties for critics, could be looked at for hours, trying to understand how the artist manages to depict the most ordinary objects in such an unusual perspective that makes them mysterious.

First exhibitions

Paul Gauguin began to receive the first invitations to participate in exhibitions of the Impressionists in 1879. Paintings by Paul Gauguin have already been perceived in creative circles as works of an original and in some ways even unique artist due to the unusual manner of observing slight disproportions in the image of the female body and contrasting combinations of "hot" colorful shades, completely devoid of halftones. MinePaul did not cultivate his own style, he even tried to imitate his friend Pissarro, but the manner of his painting was so individual that, on the contrary, Pissarro was fit to imitate Gauguin. In 1885, Paul met the already famous impressionist artist Edgar Degas, who would soon become an ardent admirer of his work, would buy paintings by Paul Gauguin and support him in every possible way.

Death of an artist

In 1884, the Gauguin family moved to Copenhagen, where Paul continues his work on the stock exchange. However, painting has already become for him the meaning of his life, so a year later, leaving his wife and five children, Gauguin returns to Paris. For the next five years, Paul Gauguin, whose paintings with titles were rare, and nameless drawings prevailed, tried to paint paintings for sale, but there were no buyers. In the end, the artist leaves for Tahiti, away from civilization, where, in his own words, he "merges with nature." On the island near Gauguin, an unprecedented creative upsurge begins, and during 1892 the artist paints 80 paintings at once. Then Gauguin marries a young Tahitian and works at full strength, paints pictures, and is engaged in journalism. At some point, the painter loses his immunity and begins to suffer from tropical diseases. Paul Gauguin soon dies from one of them.