Driven by the mystery of tropical paradise

* For Europeans the romantic
strangeness and eroticism of his
paintings of the islanders, the festivities with their unknown symbolism, are
inherently attractive, and this has
tended to obscure Gauguin's real contribution. The quality of his art does not reside
in revelations of another
culture but in the aesthetic position he arrived at. (Trewin Copplestone)
* Portentous allegories about the
destiny of mankind. (John Russell)

EugSne Henri Paul Gauguin (June 7, 1848 - May 9, 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist artist. Best known as a painter, his bold experimentation with coloring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential exponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.

Paul Gauguin was born in Paris, France to journalist Clovis Gauguin and half-peruvian Aline Maria Chazal, the daughter of a socialist leader. In 1851 the family left Paris for Peru motivated by the political climate of the period. Clovis died on the voyage, leaving three-year old Paul, his mother and his sister to fend for themselves. They lived for four years in Lima, Peru with Paul's uncle and his family. The imagery of Peru would later influence Paul in his art.

At the age of seven, Paul and his family returned to France. They moved to Orleans, France to live with his grandfather.

He soon learned French and excelled in his studies. At seventeen, Gauguin signed on as a pilot's assistant in the merchant marine to fulfill his required military service. Three years later, he joined the navy where he stayed for two years. In 1871, Gauguin returned to Paris where he secured a job as a stockbroker. In 1873, he married a Danish woman Mette Sophie Gad. Over the next ten years, they would have five children.

Gauguin had been interested in art since his childhood. In his free time, he began painting. He would also frequent galleries and purchase many of the new art coming out in Paris. Gauguin formed a friendship with artist Camille Pissarro, who introduced him to various artists through his connections.

As he progressed in his art, Gauguin rented a studio, and showed paintings in impressionist exhibitions held in 1881 and 1882. Over two summer vacations, he painted with Pissarro and occasionally Paul C,zanne.

By 1884 Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he unsuccessfully pursued a business career. Driven to paint full-time, he returned to Paris in 1885, leaving his family in Denmark. Without adequate subsistence, his wife (Mette Sophie Gadd) and their five children returned to her family. Gauguin outlived two of his children.

Like his friend Vincent Van Gogh, with whom he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin experienced bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. Disappointed with Impressionism, he felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour. There was a vogue in Europe at the time for the art of other cultures, especially that of Japan (Japonisme). He was invited to participate in the 1889 exhibition organized by Les XX.

Under the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards Cloisonnism, a style given its name by the critic ?douard Dujardin in response to Emile Bernard's cloisonne enamelling technique.

Gauguin was very appreciative of Bernard's art and of his daring with the employment of a style which suited Gauguin in his quest to express the essence of the objects in his art.

In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, the image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour-thus dispensing with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting.

His painting later evolved towards "Synthetism" in which neither form nor colour predominate but each has an equal role.

In 1891, Gauguin, frustrated by lack of recognition at home and financially destitute, sailed to the tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional." (Before this he had made several attempts to find a tropical paradise where he could 'live on fish and fruit' and paint in his increasingly primitive style, including short stays in Martinique and as a worker on the Panama Canal).

Living in Mataiea Village in Tahiti, he painted "Fatata te Miti" ("By the Sea"), "La Orana Maria" (Ave Maria) and other depictions of Tahitian life. He moved to Punaauia in 1897, where he created the masterpiece painting "Where Do We Come From" and then lived the rest of his life in the Marquesas Islands, returning to France only once.

His works of that period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and an exoticized view of the inhabitants of Polynesia.

In Polynesia he clashed often with the colonial authorities and with the Catholic Church. During this period he also wrote the book Avant et AprSs (before and after), that is a fragmented collection of observations about life in Polynesia, memories from his life and comments on literature and paintings.

In 1903 due to a problem with the church and the government he was sentenced to three months in prison, and he owed a fine. At that time he was being supported by an art dealer. He died of syphilis before he could start the prison sentence. His body had been weakened by alcoholism and a dissipated life style. He was 54 years old.