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 accented decorative stylization. The paintings of Paul Gauguin are a striking 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. Quite quickly, he succumbed to the all-consuming style of conditional images with elements of authenticity. Ten years later, the artist already took part in the exhibitions of the Impressionists. And since about 1983, he began to professionally paint. However, the paintings of Paul Gauguin were not in demand, and he lived in need. Nevertheless, Paul worked actively, constantly searching for new forms, a variety of which accompanied post-impressionism, as well as expressionism, symbolism and modernity that came to replace it. The artist Gauguin, whose paintings will be sold at the largest auctions of the world after his death, barely made ends meet, but did not let his hands go, worked day and night to earn his living.
A family
The years of youth and adolescence of Paul Gauguin passed in a family of political marginals. His father was a journalist and led a column of political chronicle in the magazine Nacional, thoroughly saturated with republican radical ideas. Mother and all her many relatives preached Utopian socialism. In 1849, the Gauguin family boarded a ship sailing to Peru and left France. On the way, the elder Gauguin died of a heart attack. Left without a father, Paul was adopted into a family of maternal relatives 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 a craving for the tropics.
Sea travel
However, in 1855, Paul Gauguin, as an eight-year-old child, went with his mother back to France on matters of inheritance left over from his father’s brother. Mother and son remained in France, Paul went to school, and his mother Alina opened a sewing workshop. They stayed to live in Paris. When Paul was 17 years old, he entered the sea-going vessel as a pilot of the pilot. Over the next six years, young Gauguin will plow the seas and oceans, practically not stepping on the ground. During the sea voyages of Paul, his mother dies, leaving him a mandate in which he advised him to get an education and make a career. Upon arriving in Paris in 1872, Gauguin met with his mother’s former friend, Gustave Arosa, who was a businessman, and also collected paintings. Thanks to his recommendations, Paul was able to get a job as a stockbroker.
Marriage
The young man’s life began to improve gradually, a year later he met at a party in the Gustav family a Danish girl Sophie Gadon and married her. The couple had five children, they appeared one after another with an interval of two and a half years. Emil, Alina, Clovis, Jean-René and Paul. Soon the formation of Gauguin as an artist began, he acquired a workshop and began to embark on an exciting process of painting. In a large family of French artists , a new name appeared - Paul Gauguin. Paintings, the description of which caused some difficulties for critics, could be considered for hours, trying to understand how this artist manages to depict the most ordinary objects in such an unusual perspective that gives them mystery.
First exhibitions
Paul Gauguin began to receive the first invitations to participate in exhibitions of impressionists in 1879. The paintings of Paul Gauguin were already perceived in creative circles as the works of an original and somewhat unique artist due to the unusual manner of observing slight imbalances in the image of the female body and contrasting combinations of “hot” colorful shades completely devoid of halftones. Paul didn’t cultivate his own style, he even tried to imitate his friend Pissarro, but the style of his painting was so individual that, on the contrary, Pissarro fit to imitate Gauguin. In 1885, Paul met with the already famous artist-impressionist Edgar Degas, who will soon become an ardent admirer of his work, will buy paintings by Paul Gauguin and strongly support him.
The death of the 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. The next five years, Paul Gauguin, whose paintings with names were infrequent, and nameless drawings prevailed, is trying to draw paintings for sale, but buyers are not. In the end, the artist leaves for Tahiti, away from civilization, where, in his own words, he "merges with nature." An unprecedented creative upsurge begins on the island of Gauguin, and during 1892 the artist paints immediately 80 paintings. Then Gauguin marries a young Tahitian and works in full force, writes paintings, is engaged in journalism. At some point, the painter loses immunity and begins to get sick with tropical diseases. Paul Gauguin soon dies from one of them.