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Daniel de Monfreid, Portrait of Paul Gauguin, 1900

Paul Gauguin

The Symbolist artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was considered the leader of the Pont-Aven School of painters and was also an important inspiration for the Nabis. His stylized prints are marked by their flat, ornamental compositions, in which he blended his experiences, emotions and ideas into a decorative synthesis.

Gauguin abandoned what he saw as the decaying civilization of metropolitan Paris for remote Brittany and later the islands of Martinique and Tahiti. His Primitivism came through in this choice of subject matter, his naive style and his unpolished techniques.

The Volpini Suite

In this series of ten zincographs, Gauguin combined various motifs from his painted work in an inventive mix. The cycle of prints was exhibited at the Volpini café during the 1889 World Exposition. He restricted himself to black and brown printing ink, but opted for canary-yellow paper, which caught the attention of numerous artists. The prints were published in a limited edition and Gauguin hand-coloured the covers, making the series even more unique.

Paul Gauguin, Breton Women by a Gate (Bretonnes à la barrière) from the series Volpini, 1889

Paul Gauguin, Breton Women by a Gate (Bretonnes à la barrière) from the series Volpini, 1889

Paul Gauguin, Joys of Brittany (Joies de Bretagne) from the series Volpini, 1889

Paul Gauguin, Joys of Brittany (Joies de Bretagne) from the series Volpini, 1889

The Noa Noa print series

For the Noa Noa print series, which Gauguin produced a few years later, he threw himself into the art of the woodcut – a medium that lent itself even better to his desire for simplicity and artisanship. The exotic-looking prints were intended to illustrate the travel journal of the same name that he produced in Tahiti. The raw and unpolished images he achieved by gouging the hard surface illustrate his now controversial neo-colonial imagining of the island.

Paul Gauguin, Delightful Land (Nave Nave Fenua) from the series NOA NOA, 1894

Paul Gauguin, Delightful Land (Nave Nave Fenua) from the series NOA NOA, 1894

Further reading
  • Caroline Boyle-Turner, The Prints of the Pont-Aven School, Washington 1986
  • Tobia Bezzola en Elizabeth Prelinger, Paul Gauguin: The Prints, Zurich 2012
  • Marcel Guérin, L'Oeuvre gravé de Gauguin, San Francisco 1980

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