Paul Gauguin

1848-1903

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) was a French painter, sculptor, printmaker and ceramist who abandoned a career as a Paris stockbroker in the early 1880s to paint full time, encouraged by his friendship with Camille Pissarro and early exhibitions with the Impressionists. He soon broke from their style, developing a bolder, flatter use of color and simplified form that became known as Synthetism, working alongside artists at Pont-Aven in Brittany and later in Martinique. In 1891 he sailed to Tahiti, then a French colony, seeking distance from European civilization; his Tahitian and, later, Marquesan paintings—rich in color and charged with symbolic and spiritual themes—represent his best-known work. He died in Atuona in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, still only modestly recognized, but his art proved deeply influential on later modern painters including Picasso and Matisse, and he is remembered too for his volatile friendship with Vincent van Gogh. His work is now held in major museums worldwide, from the Metropolitan to the Hermitage.