Developments in the 19th Century


 

Art Styles in 19th century - Art Map


 

SYMBOLISM

in

FRANCE



(Between Romanticism and Expressionism)


 

Paul Gauguin

(1848 - 1903)

 

b Paris, 7 June 1848; d Atuona, Marquesas Islands, 8 May 1903.

French painter, printmaker, sculptor and ceramicist. His style developed from Impressionism through a brief cloisonnist phase (in partnership with Emile Bernard) towards a highly personal brand of Symbolism, which sought within the tradition of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes to combine and contrast an idealized vision of primitive Polynesian culture with the sceptical pessimism of an educated European. A selfconsciously outspoken personality and an aggressively asserted position as the leader of the Pont-Aven group made him a dominant figure in Parisian intellectual circles in the late 1880s. His use of non-naturalistic colour and formal distortion for expressive ends was widely influential on early 20th-century avant-garde artists.