Paul Gauguin’s Primitivism With Tahitian Motifs

Progressive Primitivism through Tahitian motifs brought Paul Gauguin to the pinnacle of his artistic career. Now let’s first dwell on Gauguin’s Style of Postmodernism. Gauguin and other painters such as Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat formed the Post-Impressionist movement by disassociating with the natural forms and relying upon their artistic memories and emotional experiences. Furthermore, they outlined their dreamy mythological imaginations by spiritual and symbolic icons. Like Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, many of them, unappreciated and frustrated, went through a difficult path to present their art and only became recognized after their death. It is not absurd that Gauguin and van Gogh took refuge and approached each other to relieve their sadness and disillusionment due to the rejections of their work by the artistic societies. They migrated from where they were active to generate their style far from constraints and pressures and shape their unconventional individualism. However, the stresses became unbearable for them. Their extreme sensitivity and the unpleasant conditions they encountered damaged their relationship. [1] After this broken friendship and the catastrophic consequences of van Gogh’s health, he was hospitalized and later lasted in a monastery for his manic outbursts. Reciprocally, two years later, because of his disappointments and the lack of sympathy in the French artistic climate, Gauguin travelled to Tahiti to his next and final destination.

Paul Gauguin’s journey to Tahiti paved another way in his artistic campaign. He tended to Primitivism and nostalgia with Tahitian motifs. A variety of non-Western folk art did emphasize the spirit’s purity of the indigenous population in his works which in his observations of the rural inhabitants had obtained. Drawing bold outlines and flat segments of natives bodies with bright colors had shaped original compositions inspired by the austerity of Tahitians. He sought an impressive effect by representing the genuine values of the villagers while he also supported them against the incompetence of their local authorities. [2]