"Le Calvaire Breton"

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(1898-1899)

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"Le Calvaire Breton", 1898-1899, woodcut on chine volant, 163x265mm; 6 1/2" x 10 3/8", wide margins.  One of approximately only 30 impressions. A very good, clean impression of this scarce print [Kornfeld 50].

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was a post-Impressionist painter, sculptor, ceramist and print maker. In 1889, his art took on its final, simplified style, Synthetism, which was bolder than Impressionism.  His style accomplished what no Romantic artist had achieved, a style based upon pre-Renaissance sources.  Its' modeling was flat, inspired by folk art with simplified forms reduced to rhythmically curved shapes.

The 19th century revival of the woodcut was led by Munch and Gauguin and formed the precedent for the German Expressionist woodcuts that were to follow.  Gauguin's woodcuts allowed for the suggestiveness and ambiguity that is at the heart of the Symbolist aesthetic. For Gauguin, the wooduct was a bridge between subtle optical surfaces and bold abstract shapes, between painting and sculpture, between what Gauguin understood as the civilized and the primitive.

This Gauguin is in a 19 3/4" x 23 1/8" enlarged leaf pattern frame with a brownish wash over black and red/orange under painting to give a warm tone to the frame.  The wood fillet is a dark mahogany ground with a gray wash.  The outer rawhide denim and inner 8-ply black rag mats are acid and lignin free and are protected with Acrylite-AR OP3 (UV) by CYRO ... SOLD