Thursday, September 3, 2015

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin - “Arearea” 21.9.1968

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist who was not well appreciated until after his death. Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and synthetist style that were distinguishably different from Impressionism. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Gauguin’s art became popular after his death; partially from the efforts of art dealer Ambroise Vollard who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career, as well as assisting in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris. Many of his paintings were in the possession of Russian collector Sergei Shchukin as well as other important collections.

He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His bold experimentation with color led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art, while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.

The painting featured on the stamp is the “Arearea” an 1892 work by Paul Gauguin. It was one of the works Gauguin exhibited at his 1893 Durand-Ruel exhibition in Paris. It was bequeathed to the French state in 1961, and was in the collection of the Louvre. From 1986, the painting has been in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay. In April 1891, Gauguin set off for his first visit to Tahiti, in search of traces of a primitive way of life. He took his inspiration for imaginary scenes in his paintings from what he saw around him, as well as from local stories and ancient religious traditions. Arearea is representative of these works where dream and reality coexist.

In the foreground, there are several motifs, which he had no doubt observed, as they recur throughout the paintings of this period. There are two women seated in the centre of the picture, a tree cutting across the canvas, and a red dog. The sky has disappeared; a succession of coloured planes – green, yellow, red – forms the structure of the composition.

In the imaginary scene in the background, there are several women worshipping a statue. Gauguin has enlarged a small Maori statue to the size of a great Buddha, and has invented a sacred rite. All these elements create an enchanted world, full of both harmony and melancholy, where man lives under the protection of the gods, in a luxuriant natural environment, in an archaic, idealised Polynesia.

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