Paul Gauguin was a painter on a quest to revive the lucid style of painting that he thought had been lost and had made numerous attempts to do during his life.
The Life of Paul Gauguin is incredibly inspiring and cinematic.
Paul Gauguin was one of the select few common guys who could escape their everyday lives in order to realise and realise a dream.
He had every intention of becoming known as a Prophet of Art, but he had no idea that he would surpass that and be hailed by later reviewers as a covert classicist who was a genuine from the start artist of enormous genius.
Gauguin’s dream was not to be a painter known for exacting detail, but to be a forerunner of a new age of artistic expression and symbolism, defined not only by his art but by his character, reputation, essence, and aura
He created a legend about himself that may have begun as a performance but later materialised.
The beautiful rhythms of the groups of figures in Gauguin’s composition are still subject to the composition’s rigidly balanced horizontal and vertical framework.
Te Tamari No Atua (The Birth of Christ), one of his most famous paintings, shows a mother and infant surrounded by a shining aureole while an island girl is seen lying on her cot, a cradle with oxen and a dog behind her, two caregivers in the distance.
From Everyman to Prophet to Master: The Evolution of The Prophet Gauguin
The real life of Gauguin began in Peru in 1848, when he was born to a journalist and his French-Peruvian wife, who was also a descendant of Peruvian nobility. Despite Gauguin’s desire for everyone to believe he was “a savage,” his life actually began in France. Prior to his enlistment in the Merchant Marine as a young man, he was primarily raised in Lima, Peru.
His time as a seaman carried him to numerous ports of call, including those in India and the Black Sea, but Rio de Janeiro and the South American continent, where he imagined his barbaric origins, captured his attention the most.
As he matured into a man, he established himself in Paris and worked as a finance for a local business. He had a successful career, a happy marriage, and attained wealth.
With his wealth, he started collecting Impressionist paintings, which sparked a lifelong fascination for him.
He first became interested in making art after encountering Impressionists like Cezanne and Camille Pissarro while collecting.
Gauguin learned to be an artist and was influenced by Pissarro.
The respected Impressionist welcomed the novice painter and stockbroker to show alongside his contemporaries.
The stock market fell a little more than ten years after Gauguin started painting as a hobby. He completely abandoned the status quo lifestyle of Europe and his place in it as a business and family man in pursuit of the life of an artist, much to the chagrin of his wife and her respectable family.
He looked for his lost paradise in distant lands because he believed he could never find it in the banal conformity of European life.
He travelled to Panama, Martinique, Brittany, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands while on a voyage of discovery.
He also investigated esoteric spiritual realms and far-flung geographical regions.
He created a group known as the Nabis—the Hebrew word for “prophets”—during the occult and spiritualist age in which he lived and painted. Along with other painters like Maurice Denis and Emile Bernard, he accepted the notion that art might serve as prophesy.
He thought that bringing the art back to the primitive and native brought it closer to a spiritual experience. Additionally, he and the other Nabis insisted that they were ushering in a new period of art, which they undoubtedly were.
He applied this idea to self-creation and spun tales and legends about his life and family, portraying them as Incan barbarians as opposed to Peruvian royalty.
The wonderful works Gauguin produced in remote locations cost him everything. He had no money to his name when he passed away, and his wife and family had abandoned him after their lives fell apart as a result of his carelessness. He did have his legacy, though.
Paul Gauguin’s Art, Style, and Legacy
Sometimes, viewers’ attention is diverted from Gauguin’s expertise and execution of his work by the romance and drama of his life and the romantic topics of his paintings.
Although it was never his purpose, he was a covert classicist who was never far from the complexity and beauty of classicism.
Instead of just encouraging the observer to admire a skillfully portrayed work of realistic art or the aesthetic beauty of the impressionists, Gauguin used flat surfaces and vibrant colours to evoke emotion in the viewer.
Not the painting itself, but the subjects were what he intended the viewer to interact with.
Because it did not originate from or depict any primal sources, the prophet was unimpressed by the European art world’s attempt at primitive art.
However, he went to Tahiti to do primitive art in a primitive setting.
He doesn’t need or use detail to convey the feelings of the painting’s key themes in Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry? ), where his choice of composition and colour convey the atmosphere of the setting.
The frail composition, which consists of three horizontal fields of colour and two figures stacked on top of each other in the centre of the painting, defies all compositional conventions, demonstrates the anti-establishment, pro-savagery ideal he wanted.
This breach of the rules merely enhances the atmosphere and is very acceptable, especially in light of the main subject’s upbeat attitude.
An older female sits smugly in the back as the expectant bride figure in the front strikes a playful and anticipatory attitude.
The three fields of colour that make up the landscape’s relaxing colour scheme restore balance to the offset arrangement and evoke peace, pleasure, and the carefree delight of a simple setting.
He is able to capture the mood and emotion of the girls in the painting without being hindered by his concept of simple planes and clear lines; in fact, it actually makes the impact stronger.
Gauguin once written – “One must always feel the plane, the wall; tapestries need no perspective”
In fact, all that is required is the proposal.
His choice of hues, subject, and composition come together to make the entire.
His numerous creations realise his goals and transport the audience to a spiritual and emotional space near the centre of the animal mind.
The Art Nouveau, German Expressionism, Fauvist, and Abstract movements were all affected by his perspective on shape and plane.
This supposedly indestructible, athletic man’s body and spirit were destroyed in his final days by his dissolute life, terrible poverty, a heart problem, and alcohol.
But Paul was a guy who succeeded where so many others have failed, realising his beliefs into eternity and realising the fulfilment of a dream.
Paul Gauguin, hello We genuinely find inspiration in you!
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