What torments me most is not so much the poverty as the continuous obstacles to my art that I cannot do as I feel it, and could do without the poverty that ties my hands. My artistic center is in my brain and nowhere else, and I am great because I do not let myself be disturbed by others and because I do what is inside me.Paul Gauguin, Lettera alla moglie , Tahiti, marzo 1892
On the subject of line and drawing, Gauguin said in 1879, “One must draw and draw again…It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one day you are amazed to discover that you have found the way to render a thing with its own character…don’t make pretty, clever little lines, but be simple and insist on the major lines that count…”.
The women of the island of the Tropics, at the South Seas,where Paul Gauguin spent the most artistic years of his live, comes out with there gorgeous beauty in all his painting.
Paul Gauguin In 1891, ruined and in debt, Gauguin sailed for the South Seas to escape European civilization and “everything that is artificial and conventional.” Except for one visit to France from 1893 to 1895, he remained in the Tropics for the rest of his life, first in Tahiti and later in the Marquesas Islands.
Gauguin was born in Paris on June 7, 1848 and died on 1903 at Marquesas Islands.The essential characteristics of his style changed little in the South Seas; he retained the qualities of expressive color, denial of perspective, and thick, flat forms. Under the influence of the tropical setting and Polynesian culture, however, Gauguin's paintings became more powerful, while the subject matter became more distinctive, the scale larger, and the compositions more simplified. His subjects ranged from scenes of ordinary life, such as Tahitian Women, or On the Beach (1891, Musée de Orsay, Paris), to brooding scenes of superstitious dread, such as Spirit of the Deadwatching (1892, Albright-Knox Art Gallery). His masterpiece was the monumental allegory Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), which he painted shortly before his failed suicide attempt. A modest stipend from a Parisian art dealer sustained him until his death at Atuana in Marquesas on May 9, 1903.
GAUGUIN AND HIS LOVELY WOMEN:
TAHITI WOMEN ON THE BEACH.
Gauguin said:My artistic center is in my brain and nowhere else. Gauguin was starting his works by a rough sketches.He draws the main figuers of his work and after that start painting.
He painted the Tahiti women on the beach twise.
We can see the changes in that painting.The background is little bit different.The dress of the women in the right is different and the pose too.
That fruit at bottom center of the painting.
“Dead Spirit Watching”
Here a young woman, full of sexuality and potential to make life, lies next to “Mr. Death.”
Gauguin was ill himself during this time in Tahiti when he painted that painting and he contemplated death in this and other paintings.Since Gauguin been in the tropics he was suffering from a lot of tropics's disease.All the Gauguin felt that the death is hovering near to him.
It seems that Gauguin is remarking on the fragility of human life, with this somber subject matter, ironically painted lively and exotic colors. The lusciousness of the painting emotes the beauty of life, with ever hovering death always present.
