Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903)
French Post-Impressionist painter.
With this painting, I tried to make everything breathe faith, quiet suffering, religious and primitive style and great nature with its scream.
One may wonder if any painter in the last century put more meaning into his sense of color than Gauguin.
I advised him to go to New Orleans, but he decided it was too civilized. He had to have people around him with flowers on their heads and rings in their noses before he could feel at home.
What is he, then? He is Gauguin, the savage who hates the burden of our civilization, a sort of Titan who, jealous of the creator, makes his own little world in his spare time, a child who takes toys apart in order to build others from the pieces, one who denies and defies, who prefers to see the sky red rather than blue like the rest of us.
A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.
Many people say that I don't know how to draw because I don't draw particular forms. When will they understand that execution, drawing and color (in other words, style) must be in harmony with the poem?
Copying nature — what is that supposed to mean? Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!
A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.