Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguinwas a French post-Impressionist artist. Underappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career, as well as...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth7 June 1848
CityParis, France
CountryFrance
Paul Gauguin quotes about
All the joys - animal and human - of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary.
A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.
Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent...When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion?
The missionary is no longer a man, a conscience. He is a corpse, in the hands of a confraternity, without family, without love, without any of the sentiments that are dear to us. Emasculated, in a sense, by his vow of chastity, he offers us the distressing spectacle of a man deformed and impotent or engaged in a stupid and useless struggle with the sacred needs of the flesh, a struggle which, seven times out of ten, leads him to sodomy, the gallows, or prison.
However depressed I may be I am not in the habit of giving up a project without having tried everything, even the 'impossible', to gain my end.
Slyly, banteringly, but also overbearingly, the critic - the one who does not swallow anything whole, who waits until posterity has consecrated it before... howling - is among those who howl their admiration the way they howl their insults: don't be afraid, don't tremble - the beast doesn't have any nails or teeth, or even brain: it is stuffed...
Do not finish your work too much. An impression is not sufficiently durable for its first freshness to survive a belated search for infinite detail; in this way you let the lava grow cool...
A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business.
Why did I hesitate to put all this glory of the sun on my canvas?
The landscape with its violent, pure colours dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain...
Sometimes people accuse me of being incomprehensible only because they look for an explicative side to my pictures which is not there.
Soon I'll be old and I've done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I'll become senile before I've finished what I've undertaken.
Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth?
Night is here. All is at rest. My eyes close in order to see without actually understanding the dream that flees before men infinite space; and I experience the languorous sensation produced by the mournful procession of my hopes.