Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin is a French post-impressionist painter, leader of the School of Pont-Aven, who chose to cut himself off from civilization and its barriers by going to live in Polynesia.
After six years in the Navy, Gauguin discovered painting late in life through Camille Pissaro and became passionate about the Impressionists and their revolution.
Adventurer at heart, he paints, travels, apprehends symbolism (which nourishes his work) and the cloisonnism which leads his art towards a synthesis where creation is more important than the restitution of reality.
He left France in 1891 (he would not return there again) first for Tahiti and then the Marquesas Islands. By cutting itself off from the West, it also chooses to free itself from the conventions that hold it back. His painting is released at the same time and he becomes, alone in front of his easel, one of the major painters of his time, one of those who most influenced his contemporaries (Fauves, Cubists, Expressionists).