(b. June 7, 1848, Paris, Fr. – d. May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa,
Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia), one of the leading French painters
of the Post-impressionist period, whose development of a conceptual method
of representation was a decisive step for 20th-century art. After spending
a short period with
Vincent van Gogh
in Arles (1888), Gauguin increasingly abandoned imitative art for
expressiveness through color.
Gauguin, in what we now might call a “mid-life
crisis”, left his career and family to pursue painting, traveling
as far as Tahiti to “find himself”. From 1891 he lived and
worked in Tahiti and elsewhere in the South Pacific. Inspired this tropical
environment, Gauguin moved away from Impressionism (and the style of his
and became known for using flat forms and wild color. His best known
works all came from this later period.
His masterpieces include the early
- Vision After the Sermon (1888) and
and the later works:
- Tahitian Women, (1891)
- Nevermore, (1897)
- Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98).