Conversation - Paul Gauguin

Painting Detail

Conversation
Artist: Paul Gauguin
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 70.5x90.3 cm
Date: 1891
Genre: Genre Painting
Source: State Museum of New Western Art, Moscow, 1948

Produced during the first year of Gauguin's stay in Polynesia - where he moved in 1891 in search of a romantic world that would be unlike Europe, preserving the natural harmony of a simple existence - this painting is not so much a depiction of a real scene as an image of an eternal world with an unchanging flow of life. The exoticism of the Tahitian landscape was an organic part of that image.

The artist's inscription on the canvas can be translated as Word, Word, or Gossip, but although the women sitting in a circle are chatting, the everyday quality of the subject does not prevent a sense of mystery.

Gauguin moved beyond the Impressionism which attracted him early in his career, developing his own, very individual style. In creating resonant combinations of colour masses, using linear rhythms and simplifying space, the artist achieved a very decorative effect in many of his canvases.