Gauguin's World

Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao inspires new ways of seeing and thinking about one of the most renowned artists of the nineteenth century. Revisiting Paul Gauguin at a particular moment in his life, when he was approaching death, looking back on scattered memories from his final resting place in the Marquesas Islands, Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao deepens our understanding of one of the most polarising artists of his time and ours.

This magnificent and authoritative publication, edited by the internationally esteemed scholar of nineteenth century French art, Henri Loyrette, traces Gauguin’s physical, spiritual and artistic journey as he travelled first to Denmark, Brittany and Provence, then to Martinique, Tahiti and finally the Marquesas Islands in Polynesia. Tracing Gauguin’s path as he sought increasingly remote locations to live and work, Loyrette explains how Gauguin ‘believed in a real correspondence between man and the world around him’. Thoughtful, wide-ranging perspectives on Gauguin’s life and practice by Nicholas Thomas, Vaiana Giraud, Norma Broude and Miriama Bono, with particular focus on Gauguin’s time in the Pacific, illuminate the artist in all his human and artistic complexity.

Featuring more than 150 colour reproductions, this publication is the first to explore Gauguin’s inner journey and quest to develop his own identity, surveying his practice from its impressionist beginnings and symbolist leanings to his Polynesian periods.