Gauguin in Martinique
Six Paintings, One Concept
We could make this publication thanks to small donations. How is 3 minutos de arte supported?
The four months Gauguin spent on the island of Martinique, in the Caribbean, were crucial for his artistic life. Before starting this journey —whose original destination was Panamá— with the painter Charles Laval, Gauguin wrote the famous phrase announcing he would go away from civilization to search for the essential things, the instinct, and the origin: “I will take my paint and my brushes and live like a native.”
It was not until the following year, in 1888, that Gauguin returned to Brittany, the time of the Pont-Aven School, Synthetism and the Cloisonnist technique. (Note that in Martinique, he still did not use areas of almost pure color outlined with a black border, but used a brushstroke that is characteristic of the first part of his career.)
Gauguin himself later told an art critic (before his first trip to Tahiti): "I had a decisive experience in Martinique. It was only there that I felt like my real self, and one must look for me in the works I brought back from there, rather than those from Brittany, if one wants to know who I am."
Recommended links:
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? (1897)
Gauguin: “Art is what you see, the emotion it causes you.”
The First Painting of Synthetism?
You can also find more material using the search engine.
0 Comments