A Parisian by birth, Paul Gauguin worked as a merchant marine and as a stockbroker before
embarking on his career in art. Although Gauguin was known as a Post-Impressionist painter,
his foundation in art began while studying with Impressionist Camile Pissarro.
The late 1880s proved to be the turning point that brought Gauguin into the early
states of Post-Impressionistic painting. Having rejected the Impressionist theory of the
momentary effects that light could have on an object, Gauguin chose instead to concentrate on
using pure color and simplified forms. He also developed the technique of Synthetism, a
symbolic representation of nature using massive simplified forms and large, bright planes of
color.
After briefly forming a collaboration with Vincent Van Gogh and Paul C‚zanne,
Gauguin moved to the South Seas. Living in the jungles of Tahiti, he worked arduously, his
imagination stimulated by the lovely and peaceful surroundings. His largest and most famous
painting, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?," was painted while
in the South Seas. It expresses Gauguin's theories of Synthetism accurately and pointedly.
Other paintings that he created during this period mark the beginnings of the Symbolist and
Fauvist movements in art.
Gauguin was, unfortunately, not recognized as a major force in the art world until after
his death in 1903.
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