Paul Gauguin
1848-1903 · French (Paris; worked in Tahiti) · Post-Impressionism
Known for: Painter who abandoned bourgeois life for the South Pacific, seeking 'primitive' paradise in bold, flat colors
Gauguin abandoned his wife, five children, and stockbroker career to paint in Brittany and then Tahiti. His bold, flat, symbolically colored paintings fused modernism with Tahitian imagery and electrified the avant-garde.
He clashed violently with Van Gogh in Arles, contracted syphilis in Tahiti, and died in poverty in the Marquesas. His romantic vision of paradise was largely self-created, but his color innovations changed painting forever.
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