Explore Gauguin's Pont-Aven Journey

Description

André CARIOU [under the direction of] [with Mary Anne STEVENS & Antoine TERRASSE] L'Aventure de Pont-Aven et Gauguin Skira. Paris 2003, Hardcover with illustrated dust jacket. (28.8 x 24.7 cm), 365 pages with 253 illustrations. The extraordinary story of this small Breton village of 1500 inhabitants, a town center with incomparable evocative power, inseparable from the name of Gauguin, whose masterpieces are among the major works of late 19th-century Western painting. 'The Vision of the Sermon' (ill. 1), painted in Pont-Aven in 1888, is considered in Gauguin's oeuvre as the pivot between an early period influenced by Impressionism and a new, more personal phase now referred to as synthétisme. Through the symbolic treatment of the theme and its plastic expression, it marks one of the first steps in the birth of what we now call 'modern art'. Gauguin was not alone in Pont-Aven. From his first stay, two years earlier, he connected with several artists, often young, sensitive to the strength and nonconformity of his personality but also to the modernity of his painting. The group expanded through successive encounters, both in Pont-Aven and Pouldu. The relationships among these artists, most of whom are innovators, are identified under the term 'Ecole de Pont-Aven'. A very beautiful copy.