A talk with Juliet Heslewood, art historian and author on Gauguin.

The first Impressionist exhibition was in 1874 and caused disruption in the Parisian art world. By the end of the century artists had explored its innovations, liberating them from the conventions of the past. Their dramatic changes, achieved out of the movement, would have wide-spread repercussions, establishing Paris as the centre of the modern European stage.

In this talk, Juliet will explore how although Paul Gauguin had learned much from the Impressionist group, he found it fell short of his interests that were leading away from the purely visible.

Gauguin often escaped Paris and stayed in Brittany where in painting the local people and their lives he hoped to create work that was ‘like the sound of my clogs on the earth’.

In Martinique, where he stayed in 1887, and in Tahiti in the 1890s, he was moved to explore the very essence of different cultures, leading to a taste for ‘Primitivism’ in artists such as Picasso, Matisse and the German Die Brûcke.

£8