Paul Gauguin's Post-Impressionist Art

Paul Gauguin was a prominent figure for the French avant-garde. His career was teeming with work that was much different to the previous Impressionists. His Post-Impressionist art showed new explorations of color. These discoveries had vast reviews from art critics– mainly after his passing in May of 1903. Gauguin studied and practiced numerous techniques during his investigations. These studies consisted of Delacroix’s use and application of color, chromo-therapy, Cloisonnism, Seurat’s stippling techniques, and Goethe’s experiments with color, light and the human eye. After leaving his wife and children and pursuing a career in art, Gauguin travelled throughout France and later into Tahiti and Martinique. During these travels, Gauguin’s …show more content…
These colored light experiments assisted him on mastering a type of harmonic tonality with his paintings as well as a brush stroke that would be used in his later works. A brush stroke that had similar angularity and was consistent throughout the overall composition. An example of these colored light and brush stroke studies is Gauguin’s 1880 painting titled, Flowers and Carpet (Pansies) 1¬¬. In this painting, the background is nearly impossible to read. The background appears to be flat with different tones of red, blue and purple. The flatness of the background creates the main object, the flowers, to have mo¬re depth. The colors of the flowers are harmonious with the overall composition. Dark purples and greens are used to define the characteristics of the present flowers. These colors are similar to Delacroix’s application of …show more content…
The base of the image has consistent strokes upwards with browns, oranges, and yellows. These colors resemble the fringes on the end of the carpet. The colors are muted compared to his later paintings. These browns, oranges, and yellows were likely mixed to create different pigments on the fringes. Towards the center of the painting, the brush strokes seem to translate horizontally. The horizontality of these strokes make the background feel less three dimensional. However, the white and blue jar has vertical strokes which helps alleviate it from the rest of the background. These techniques begin to reflect the techniques used by the Nabis. The Nabis, a Post-Impressionist avant-garde group in France, were interested in non hyper realistic paintings. Similar to the Flower and Carpet painting, the forms are abstracted and not exact. Color derives the f¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬orms similarly to Delacroix’s