Gauguin, (Eugène Henri) Paul

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French post-Impressionist painter. Going beyond the Impressionists' concern with ever-changing appearances, he developed a heavily symbolic and decorative style characterized by his sensuous use of pure colours. In his search for a more direct and intense experience of life, he moved to islands in the South Pacific, where he created many of his finest works. Among his paintings is The Yellow Christ (1889; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York State).

Born in Paris, Gauguin spent his childhood in Peru. After a few years as a stockbroker, he took up full-time painting in 1883 and became a regular contributor to the Impressionists' last four group exhibitions 1880–86. In the period 1886–91 he spent much of his time in the village of Pont Aven in Brittany, where he concentrated on his new style, Synthetism, based on the use of powerful, expressive colours and boldly outlined areas of flat tone. Influenced by Symbolism, he chose subjects reflecting his interest in the beliefs of other cultures. He made brief visits to Martinique and Panama 1887–88, and in 1888 spent two troubled months with Vincent van Gogh in Arles, Provence. He lived in Tahiti 1891–93 and 1895–1901, and from 1901 in the Marquesas Islands, where he died. It was in Tahiti that he painted one of his best-known works, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897; Museum of Fine Art, Boston). Gauguin has touched the modern imagination as an escapist from a sophisticated civilization, but the new life he gave to colour was his great legacy to modern painting. His life is vividly recorded in his letters, journals, and the poetical fragment of autobiography Noa-Noa.