Unwinding the Gauguin Myth

Sue Prideaux’s latest biography paints a vivid portrait of Paul Gauguin, the towering artist whose bright colors, flat planes, symbolism, and naked, dark-skinned Polynesian women paved the way for modernist art. She covers Gauguin’s life from his infancy and childhood in Peru to his adolescence in France and later as a Merchant Marine to his adulthood. She follows his life in Paris, Brittany, Denmark, as well as French Polynesia, where he created most of his 500-plus works of art, including portraits, ceramics, woodcarvings, prints, and sculptures.