Home  |  Up  |  Info  |  Search  |  View basket  |  Checkout  |  Email us  |  Login

Architecture Decorative Arts Fine Art Forthcoming Titles Instruments and Technology Oriental Art Exclusive Titles

Catalogue >Fine Art >  Monographs >  Gauguin and the Origins of Symbolism Gauguin and the Origins of Symbolism Contributors: Richard Shiff, Guillermo Solana, Guy Cogeval, Mary Ann Stevens and Maria Dolores Jiménez Blanco. Impressionist and Symbolist painter Paul Gauguin became one of the major influences on the general non-naturalistic trends of twentiethcentury art. 'the catalogue, amply illustrated with beautiful colour plates, clearly demonstrates that Gauguin's Symbolism was not simply a by-product of the literary movement, but had a distinct pictorial foundation.' Burlington Magazine, May 2006 336 pages / 280 x 240mm / 240 colour, 30 mono illustrations ISBN 0 85667 595 4 | Retail price £35.00  view sample pages in PDF format Online price: £24.50 / €36.75 This catalogue, accompanied an exhibition at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid - 28 September 2004 - 9 January 2005 Because of the romantic appeal of his life, and his willingness to sacrifice everything for his art, Gauguin has been with Van Gogh the most common subject for popular and fictional biography. From the mid-1880s until his departure for Tahiti in 1891, Gauguin moved beyond Impressionism to become the leading figure of the Symbolist movement in painting. This departure from Impressionism led him to question the entire ‘naturalist’ tradition of European art from the Renaissance onwards. He sacrificed all of painting’s descriptive devices in favour of line and flat colour. His path towards Symbolism can also be characterised as a ‘primitive’ quest, developed both in iconography and style. On the iconographic level, this tendency starts from the use of a number of pastoral themes representing scenes of rural life. This spiritual return was accompanied by a stylistic regression, a leap from naturalism towards archaic modes of representation. This catalogue, which accompanies an exhibition at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (28 September 2004 - 9 January 2005), follows this process through a series of encounters between Gauguin and his masters, his contemporaries and his pupils. About the Authors Guillermo Solana is Principle Lecturer of Aesthetics and Theory of the Arts at the University Autónoma of Madrid; Richard Shiff is Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art, Department of Art and Art History, The University of Texas, Austin; Guy Cogeval is Director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; and Maria Dolores Jiménez-Blanco is principal lecturer at the Department of Humanities at the University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona