Paul Gauguin quotes

Paul Gauguin was a French Post-Impressionist artist, famed for his bold colors and innovative style. His work and travels, especially in Tahiti, greatly influenced the direction of modern art. He left a lasting legacy as a pioneer who challenged artistic norms and inspired future generations. Here are 57 of his quotes:

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

Paul Gauguin

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.

Paul Gauguin

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?

Paul Gauguin

No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's - peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!

Paul Gauguin

My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.

Paul Gauguin

A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.

Paul Gauguin

A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.

Paul Gauguin

In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.

Paul Gauguin

In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?

Paul Gauguin

I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom of behavior.

Paul Gauguin

A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.

Paul Gauguin

Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!

Paul Gauguin

Don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amide nature, extrapolate art from it and concentrate on what you will create as a result.

Paul Gauguin

I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet, to be rid of the influence of civilization. I want only to do simple, very simple art, and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain and to do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true.

Paul Gauguin

With what is he concerned? Drawing was at its lowest ebb; it had to be restored. Looking at these nudes, I exclaim, 'Drawing has come back again!' As a man and painter he sets an example. 'Degas' is one of those rare masters who could have had anything he wanted, yet he scorned decorations, honors, fortune, without bitterness, without jealousy.

Paul Gauguin

If we observe the totality of Camille Pissarro's works, we find there, despite the fluctuations, not only an extreme artistic will which never lies, but what is more, an essentially intuitive pure-bred art... He looked at everybody, you say! Why not? Everyone looked at him, too, but denied him. He was one of my masters and I do not deny him.

Paul Gauguin

My Dear Mr. Pissarro; - I accept with pleasure the invitation that you and Mr. Degas were kind enough to extend to me. And naturally in that case I shall abide by all the rules that govern your Societe. Based on this decision, I also have the membership dues available. I will probably see you at Miss Latouche's and we will talk about this.

Paul Gauguin

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter. Oh well, what difference does it make. What upsets me the most is not so much the poverty as the things that perpetually get in the way of my art, which I cannot carry out the way I feel and which I would carry out if it weren't for the poverty that is like a straitjacket. You tell me I am wrong to stay away from the artist[ic] center. No, I am right; I've known for a long time what I am doing and why I am doing it. My artistic center is in my brain and nowhere else, and I am strong because I am never thrown off-course by other people and because I do what is in me.

Paul Gauguin

At an exhibition in London, one sagacious critic wrote: 'Monsieur Degas seems a good pupil of Nittis!' Doesn't this reflect that mania which men of letters have for squabbling in court over who had a given idea first? And the mania spreads to painters who take great care of their originality.

Paul Gauguin

I was so bent on putting all my energy in its 'Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going' before dying [suffering from syphilis, Gauguin decided to commit suicide at the end], such painful passion amid terrible circumstances, and such a clear vision without corrections that the hastiness of it disappears and life bursts from it. It does not stink of models, professionalism, and the so-called rules that I have always disregarded.

Paul Gauguin

The critic asks me: 'So you are a Symbolist? I mean well and I would like to learn; why don't you explain Symbolism to me'.. I answer...'Well, my paintings probably speak Hebrew, which you do not understand, so there is no point in continuing the conversation.

Paul Gauguin