Two Figures, Study for 'Faa Iheiche', 1898By Paul Gauguin

The son of a French journalist and Peruvian Creole, Paul Gauguin was raised in Lima. Working as a merchant navy man and eventually a successful Parisian stockbroker, when Gauguin discovered the Impressionist movement, it ignited his desire to become a painter. He became the proverbial starving artist to devote himself to his self-coined style of “Synthetism,” which became a Post-Impressionistic style of modern art, depicting nature through massive simplified forms, large, bright planes of color, and primitive subjects. In fact, Gauguin’s art has all the appearance of flight from civilization, and it was in Tahiti that he discovered the flat forms, vibrant colors and untamed nature of primitive art that he committed to canvas with the utmost sincerity.