approx. 150 color illus.
Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey

Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903) aspired to innovate as an artist, and this desire led him to travel from France to Tahiti, where he arrived under the auspices of the French Ministry of Fine Arts in 1891. Immersed in colonial Tahiti, with its complicated mix of ancient culture and modern religion, Gauguin explored the depths of his own spirituality and faith. Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey offers unique dialogues between pieces from across the artist’s oeuvre and the extraordinary art from the Pacific Islands that captured his imagination and inspired him. This vibrantly designed volume, published on the occasion of a major exhibition at the de Young in San Francisco and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, is the first to illuminate these objects in direct conversation with one another, capturing—through breathtakingly beautiful reproductions, detailed object descriptions, and pages from Gauguin’s own notebooks—the impressions that peoples from Pacific Island cultures had of the artist and his work. Gauguin: A Spiritual Journey is further contextualized by intriguing scholarly essays and filled with contemporary approaches to understanding a figure whose struggles, indulgences, awakenings, and betrayals undergird his art and spirit.