Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist

Becoming Gauguin

Gauguin became an artist after traveling the world as a merchant marine and working as a stockbroker’s assistant. His unconventional artistic path made him uniquely open to exploring a wide range of materials, including wood, wax, and ceramics.

Traveling the World

Gauguin spent the first six years of his life in Peru and, as an adult, lived in Paris, Brittany, Martinique, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands. In every place, he absorbed—and reinvented—the local artistic and cultural traditions.

Reinventing the Past

When Gauguin first traveled to Tahiti, he was dismayed to find that much of the local culture had been transformed by colonization. The works he created there are not historically accurate but rather his reimagining of what the island might have once been.

Discovering New Methods

Gauguin not only worked as a painter, sculptor, ceramist, printmaker, and decorator—he also invented new processes in many of these areas. Sometimes he was responding to the physical or financial limitations of a place; other times it was his desire to do what no one had done before.

My goal was to transform … by intelligent hands which could impart the life of a face to a vase and yet remain true to the character of the material. – Paul Gauguin

Experimenting to the End

Gauguin was radically creative throughout his career. He never stopped experimenting with new methods, and his art continues to fascinate because it remains unpredictable, contradictory, and enormously varied in medium, form, and content.

Explore the Art Institute of Chicago’s Gauguin Collection

Sponsors

Major support is provided by Lesley and Janice Lederer.

Additional funding is contributed by anonymous donors, the Alice M. La Pert Fund for French Impressionism, Juliette F. Bacon, the Kemper Educational and Charitable Fund, Ann C. Cooluris, Katherine L. Olson Charitable Foundation, Margot Levin Schiff and the Harold Schiff Foundation, Barbara and Marc Posner, the Robert Lehman Foundation, and David and Mary Winton Green Research Fund.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Annual support for Art Institute exhibitions is provided by the Exhibitions Trust: Neil Bluhm and the Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation; Jay Franke and David Herro; Kenneth Griffin; Caryn and King Harris, The Harris Family Foundation; Liz and Eric Lefkofsky; Robert M. and Diane v.S. Levy; Ann and Samuel M. Mencoff; Usha and Lakshmi N. Mittal; Thomas and Margot Pritzker; Anne and Chris Reyes; Betsy Bergman Rosenfield and Andrew M. Rosenfield; Cari and Michael J. Sacks; the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation; and the Woman’s Board.

Support for Media Production provided by the Woman’s Board of the Art Institute of Chicago.