Chad Braun, age 16, of Utica, N.Y., for his question:
WHO WAS PAUL GAUGUIN?
Paul Gauguin was a famous French painter. His oil paintings, woodcuts and ceramics can be found in museums around the world. He is called a post Impressionist painter. Here's how you pronounce his last name: go gan.
Many of Gauguin's oil paintings are in bright colors. Lots of his forms are flat and appear to be two dimensional. He often deliberately distorted nature within his paintings by enclosing flat sections of ' bright color with heavy lines.
Gauguin's artwork helped to establish what is today regarded as modern art.
The artist was born Eugene Henri Paul Gauguin in Paris in 1848. His folks were of the middle class and part of his youthful experiences included living with his family for four years in Peru.
Gauguin decided that he wanted to be a sailor, so at the age of 17 he went to sea as a cadet with the merchant marine. This career didn't last too long, however. He next went into banking and gained success as a financier.
When he was 25 years old he married the daughter of a Danish minister and they had five children. It was during this period of time that Gauguin took up collecting the paintings of artists and he himself started to paint.
In 1883 the banking business in France experienced trouble. Using this as an excuse, Gauguin gave up his business and decided to become a full time painter.
Gauguin's early oil paintings displayed bright color and emphasized patterns rather than three dimensional objects and people. But, unfortunately, he couldn't find any buyers for his work. He and his wife quarreled over money and then separated in 1885. He was 37 years old.
For a time Gauguin painted in northwestern France. Then, hoping to find people untouched by modern civilization, he moved to Tahiti in the South Pacific in 1891 at the age of 43.
Before moving to Tahiti, Gauguin formulated a new style of painting that came to be called synthesism. He worked out this system with an artist named Emile Bernard. It stressed simple forms, bright colors and effects that were very decorative.
All of the elements appeared in Gauguin's later work.
After only two years in Tahiti Gauguin moved back to France. But he was in Europe for only two years before he returned to Tahiti in 1895 and to the South Pacific for good.
Gauguin's paintings then pictured the people who lived in the tropics. He showed his subjects to be carefree and gentle.
Lush colors of the tropics were put dramatically on canvas by Gauguin. Success finally came to the artist in his later years.
Gauguin moved to the Marquesas Islands in 1901 and died there in 1903 at the age of 55.