art-Gauguin.com
Paul Gauguin 1848-1903
Paul Gauguin - Mysterious Water. Pape Moe 1893
 Mysterious Water. Pape Moe |
From Fondation Beyeler:
Gauguin imagined the island in the South Pacific as an unsullied tropical paradise in which his talents could unfold free of all restraint. Yet soon Gauguin was forced to realize that Tahitian reality did not conform with his ideal at all, because colonialization and Christianization had largely destroyed the original culture. The artist attempted to compensate for this disappointment by depicting the Polynesian landscape and people in terms of dreamlike, exotic beauty, celebrating them in luminous compositions and expressive sculptures, and drawing inspiration from Polynesian art and mythology.