Paul Gauguin

Original Prints: Woodcuts

Between Pont-Aven (in the south Brittany, where he first settled in 1886) and the South seas, Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903) sought to develop a radical synthetist and symbolist vision that would change the face of modern art over the next century.

Yet as the tormented "savage" he soon became an archetype of the malediction of creative genius.

His original woodcuts, which he carved (and often printed) himself, constitute a veritable revolution in the history of printmaking, foreshadowing the fauvist predilection for this means of expression, with no real prior equivalents.

Le Char à Boeufs – Souvenir de Bretagne The Ox Cart – Recollection of Brittany Guérin 70, Mongan, Kornfeld, & Joachim 51 woodcut, 1898-1899 (?), a very fine impression, exceptionally with good margins on three sides, signed in ink by the artist as "PG" lower right, and numbered "2" below

Le Sourire (Titre) Guérin 75, Mongan, Kornfeld, & Joachim 58 woodcut, 1899, an exceedingly rare first state impression, not described in the catalogues raisonnés Gauguin founded his own journal in Tahiti, which he began publishing in 1899, this rare print an undescribed first state of the headpiece.          next artist  >