Les Chaumieres
Paul Gaugin (1948-1903) stands as one of the pivotal figures in the transition from Impressionism to modern art, a Post-Impressionist whose bold rejection of naturalism helped forge Symbolism, Syntheticism and Primitivism.
Born in Paris to a French journalist father and a Peruvian mother, Gauguin spent part of his childhood in Lima before returning to France. After a career as a merchant marine and successful stockbroker, he abandoned bourgeois life in the early 1880s to paint full-time, initially exhibiting with the Impressionists under Camille Pissarro's influence.
Disillusioned with Western materialism and Impressionism's optical realism, Gauguin sought deeper spiritual expression. In Brittany's Pont-Aven (1886–1888), he developed Synthetism—synthesizing form, color, and emotion through flat planes, bold outlines, and symbolic content, as seen in The Yellow Christ and Vision After the Sermon. A turbulent collaboration with Vincent van Gogh in Arles in 1888 ended dramatically but mutually enriched their work.
In 1891, Gauguin fled to Tahiti (and later the Marquesas Islands), idealizing "primitive" life to escape European corruption. There, he created his most iconic works: luminous, dreamlike canvases of Tahitian figures, mythic scenes, and exotic landscapes, such as Ia Orana Maria, Spirit of the Dead Watching, and his monumental masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897).
His emphasis on raw emotion, decorative abstraction, and non-Western influences profoundly shaped 20th-century art, inspiring Picasso's Cubism, Matisse's Fauvism, and the broader modernist embrace of the "primitive." Though controversial today for his colonial gaze, Gauguin's visionary pursuit of the symbolic and universal remains a cornerstone of art history.