Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin was a French painter who abandoned a comfortable life to pursue art in search of something wilder and more primal. Born in Paris in 1848, he worked as a stockbroker before giving it up to paint full time. He grew tired of European life and traveled to Tahiti and the South Pacific, where he painted island people and scenes in flat, bold shapes and rich, unnatural color.

His dreamy, symbolic images broke sharply from realism and pointed the way toward modern art, influencing many who came after. His romantic vision of the tropics, however, has drawn sharp modern criticism for the way he treated the young women and cultures he depicted. Gauguin died in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, leaving a body of work that is as controversial as it is influential.