Arearea
Der Artist
- Who? Paul Gauguin (Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin)
- Born: July 7, 1848 in Paris (died: May 8, 1903 in Atuona auf Hiva Oa, Französisch-Polynesien
Style: Expressionism
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin also known as Paul Gauguin, is a French painter, in addition to painting he made ceramics, wood carvings and woodcuts. He played an important role in the development of European painting and was a co-founder of Synthetism, a style within Post-Impressionist painting, and became a pioneer of Expressionism.
At the age of 17, Paul Gaugin decided to embark on a career as a sailor, which took him to South America, India, and beyond the Arctic Circle on an expedition. In 1867 Gauguin's mother died, before her death she appointed a family friend, Gustave Arosa, as Paul's guardian. In 1871 Gauguin ended his career as a sailor. Through the mediation of Gustave Arosa, Gauguin took a job in a bank in 1872. The guardian Gustave Arosa was not only a businessman, but also an art lover and collector. In his house, Gauguin became acquainted with works by Eugéne Delacroix, Gustave Courbet and Camille Corot, among others. Inspired by this, Paul Gauguin took lessons and began to paint himself in his spare time. In 1876, he managed to exhibit a painting at the Paris Salon for the first time. In the same year he visited the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro at his country estate to paint in the open under his guidance. Gauguin also participated in four other so-called Impressionist exhibitions. He made the acquaintance of numerous Impressionist artists, including Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edouard Manet, and began to collect their works.
In 1881, as a result of a stock market crash, Gauguin lost his job and took the opportunity to give up banking altogether to devote himself exclusively to painting. Gauguin was convinced that his art would catch on relatively quickly, but it was not until the last years of his life that he was able to make a modest living from his art. Thus his life was characterized by perpetual financial worries, in the meantime he kept his family afloat through donations from his acquaintances, unskilled labor and a small inheritance. In 1884, the family moved to Rouen in Normandy because the cost of living was lower there, but after only a few months, his wife and children returned to Copenhagen. After a failed exhibition of his works and arguments with his wife, he eventually returned to Paris and led a wandering life.
From the end of the 1880s, Gauguin decided to live and paint in Tahiti, where he expected a tropical paradise, free of worries, but was sorely disappointed. Due to colonial rule, the "exotic paradise" was largely destroyed. He built a hut there and lived with a Tahitian woman, who often served him as a model. In Tahiti, Gauguin created many paintings, but not of the Tahiti that actually surrounded him. Instead, he painted Tahiti, in bright colors, as he had wished and imagined it.
During this stay, Gauguin began work on his book "Noa Noa", which was published in 1897. This book was about his life in Tahiti, with partly invented content, so he wanted to create understanding for his paintings in Europe. In early 1892, Gauguin had to go to the hospital because he was spitting up blood, but he didn't stay there long because of the lack of money.
The money he had brought with him was used up and under the growing pressure he returned to France, where he hoped that with the 66 paintings he had brought with him he would finally make a breakthrough and become a celebrated artist. Soon after his return, an exhibition of his paintings was held, which was highly praised by art lovers and writers, but in the general public met with incomprehension and spot.
In 1895, an inheritance enabled Gauguin to rent a larger studio, which he decorated exotically and where he lived with a woman of mixed ethnic origin. That same year, he broke his ankle in a brawl that never really healed. After further failures, Gauguin decided to cut himself off completely from civilization at the end of 1894 and returned to Tahiti disappointed and embittered.
In September 1895, Gauguin arrived back in Papeete, disappointed to find that the Europeanization of the island had progressed. With the help of his neighbors, he built a traditional hut near Papeete and lived there again with a young woman. She gave birth to a daughter in 1896 who died soon after, and when she returned to her parents in 1899, she gave birth to a son named Emile. Soon after their arrival, Gauguin's condition deteriorated sharply; in addition to the pain in his leg, he developed a rash of syphilis. His financial situation was still worrying because of the lack of remittances from France.
In early 1897 he received the proceeds from the paintings sold in Europe, which gave him a temporary financial boost, but his health did not improve. He fell ill with chronic eye inflammation and suffered from heart trouble, and the news of the death of his daughter Alina in Copenhagen further worsened his condition. After a heart attack at the end of 1897, Gauguin once again mustered all his strength and within 4 weeks painted the 139 x 375 cm large picture "Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?", which has testamentary character. He then attempted suicide with arsenic, but this failed and he suffered from its consequences for weeks.
In 1898, lack of money forced him to temporarily stop painting and take a low-paid job as a draftsman at the Papeete construction office. In 1899 he became a contributor to the satirical magazine Les Guépes (The Wasps) and later founded a magazine called Le Sourire (The Smile). Meanwhile, the art world in Europe gradually began to take notice of Gauguin's works, and in 1900 he was able to sign a contract with Ambroise Vollard, one of the most influential art dealers of his time, which assured Gauguin a small but regular income. Thus, for the first time in his life, the artist was able to live off the proceeds of his painting.
Gauguin felt increasingly uncomfortable on Tahiti, as the island had become too European in influence for him and living there too expensive; he was also looking for new impressions and inspiration for his painting. In the fall of 1901, he moved to Atuona, the main town of the Marquesas island of Hiva Oa. The island, some 1400 kilometers from Tahiti, had also been part of the French colonial empire, but had retained more of its original character.
On Hiva Oa, Gauguin again built a hut and again a 14-year-old girl was his companion and model at the same time. After she separated from him, she gave birth to his daughter in 1902. Gauguin stood up for the rights and interests of the native population and sharply attacked the Catholic cherry. The constant disputes increased until he was finally sentenced to imprisonment and fined for libel, which he would never have been able to settle. Before he could take further legal action, he died at the age of 54 on May 8, 1903, on Hiva Oa, where he was also buried.
The Artwork
- Name: Arearea
- Created around: 1892
- Technique: Oil an canvas
Arearea is a 29 x 36 inch oil painting, it is one of the works Gauguin exhibited at his Durand-Ruel exhibition in Paris in 1993. In 1961 the painting was bequeathed to the French state and was in the collection of the Louvre. Since 1986, the painting has been in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay. The artwork depicts five local women residents and a red dog. The flowers, plants and colors in the painting are meant to convey a paradisiacal mood. In the foreground sit two women, a woman dressed in white who looks at the viewer and a woman dressed in blue who seems absorbed in her flute playing.
