Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

Gauguin began his artistic career as an amateur: he worked at a bank and did a little impressionistic painting in his free time. In the 1880s he became a full-time artist. But he soon lost interest in Impressionism. He wanted more than the casual reproduction of everyday reality. He wanted to express the invisible - feelings, moods. In his work he tried to combine the everyday with the 'higher', the spiritual. He simplified the forms and used intense colours: the image must reproduce an idea as directly as possible. In this Gauguin was a pioneer of the Symbolist movement.