Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist known for his bold use of color and innovative style, which paved the way for the Symbolist and Primitivist movements. Born in Paris, Gauguin initially pursued a career as a stockbroker before dedicating himself to art in his late 20s.

Gauguin’s travels to Tahiti and other Polynesian islands profoundly influenced his work, inspiring him to explore themes of exoticism, spirituality, and the primitive. His paintings often depicted indigenous people, lush landscapes, and mythological subjects, characterized by vibrant colors and simplified forms.

Paul Gauguin Quotes

1. “Stay firmly in your path and dare; be wild two hours a day!”
— Paul Gauguin

2. “Where do we come from? What are We? Where are we going?”
— Paul Gauguin

3. “I shut my eyes in order to see.”
— Paul Gauguin

4. “The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal.”
— Paul Gauguin

5. “Whatever may happen the sun will rise tomorrow as it rose to-day, beneficent and serene.”
— Paul Gauguin

6. “Go on working, freely and furiously, and you will make progress.”
— Paul Gauguin

7. “Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.”
— Paul Gauguin

8. “Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.”
— Paul Gauguin

9. “I have come to an unalterable decision – to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots.”
— Paul Gauguin

10. “I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world.”
— Paul Gauguin

11. “Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?”
— Paul Gauguin

12. “Happiness and work rose up together with the sun, radiant like it.”
— Paul Gauguin

13. “A bit of advice, don’t copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.”
— Paul Gauguin

14. “Let everything about you breathe the calm and peace of the soul.”
— Paul Gauguin

15. “Civilization is what makes you sick.”
— Paul Gauguin

16. “Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland – those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.”
— Paul Gauguin

17. “The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.”
— Paul Gauguin

18. “If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue.”
— Paul Gauguin

19. “Art is either revolution or plagiarism.”
— Paul Gauguin

20. “And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.”
— Paul Gauguin

21. “Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth.”
— Paul Gauguin

22. “Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.”
— Paul Gauguin

23. “A meter of green is greener than a centimeter.”
— Paul Gauguin

24. “The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.”
— Paul Gauguin

25. “Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!”
— Paul Gauguin

26. “Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.”
— Paul Gauguin

27. “Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
— Paul Gauguin

28. “There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.”
— Paul Gauguin

29. “There is no such thing as exaggerated art. I even believe that there is salvation only in extreme.”
— Paul Gauguin

30. “Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature.”
— Paul Gauguin

31. “Seek art and abstraction in nature by dreaming in the presence of it.”
— Paul Gauguin

32. “Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn’t follow anybody!”
— Paul Gauguin

33. “It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.”
— Paul Gauguin

34. “The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority – the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.”
— Paul Gauguin

35. “It is better to paint from memory, for thus your work will be your own…”
— Paul Gauguin

36. “The landscape with its violent, pure colours dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain…”
— Paul Gauguin

37. “Why did I hesitate to put all this glory of the sun on my canvas?”
— Paul Gauguin

38. “Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.”
— Paul Gauguin

39. “Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.”
— Paul Gauguin

40. “In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.”
— Paul Gauguin

41. “I am a great artist and I know it. It’s because I am that I have endured such sufferings.”
— Paul Gauguin

42. “In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?”
— Paul Gauguin

43. “A critic in my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed, he asks for my drawings. My drawings? Never! They are my letters, my secrets.”
— Paul Gauguin

44. “In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.”
— Paul Gauguin

45. “The work of a man is the explanation of the man.”
— Paul Gauguin

46. “Night is here. All is at rest. My eyes close in order to see without actually understanding the dream that flees before men infinite space; and I experience the languorous sensation produced by the mournful procession of my hopes.”
— Paul Gauguin

47. “Machines have come, art has fled, and I am far from thinking photography can help us.”
— Paul Gauguin

48. “My God! How terrible these money questions are for an artist!”
— Paul Gauguin

49. “Without delay I began work, without hesitation and all of a fever.”
— Paul Gauguin

50. “I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.”
— Paul Gauguin

51. “Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.”
— Paul Gauguin

52. “What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art?”
— Paul Gauguin

53. “You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author’s mind.”
— Paul Gauguin

54. “It is useless to advise solitude for everyone; one must be strong enough to endure it and to work alone.”
— Paul Gauguin

55. “My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.”
— Paul Gauguin

56. “One’s state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.”
— Paul Gauguin

57. “I’d like to write the way I do my paintings, that is, as fantasy takes me, as the moon dictates.”
— Paul Gauguin

58. “Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.”
— Paul Gauguin

59. “Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth? – photography, once it begins to reproduce colors, and that won’t be long in coming. And yet you want an intelligent man to sweat for months so as to give the illusion he can do something as well as an ingenious little machine can!”
— Paul Gauguin

60. “If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I’d rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!”
— Paul Gauguin

61. “Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.”
— Paul Gauguin

62. “Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.”
— Paul Gauguin

63. “In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn’t the revolutionary’s work become official, once the State takes it over?”
— Paul Gauguin

64. “A hint – don’t paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction! study nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God – to create like our Divine Master.”
— Paul Gauguin

65. “Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.”
— Paul Gauguin

66. “I have always wanted a mistress who was fat, and I have never found one. To make a fool of me, they are always pregnant.”
— Paul Gauguin

67. “Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.”
— Paul Gauguin

68. “No one is good; no one is evil; everyone is both, in the same way and in different ways. It would be needless to point this out if the unscrupulous were not always saying the opposite. It’s so small a thing, the life of man, and yet there is time to do great things, fragments of the common task. I wish to love, and I cannot. I wish not to love, and I cannot.”
— Paul Gauguin

69. “I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements.”
— Paul Gauguin

70. “Do not finish your work too much. An impression is not sufficiently durable for its first freshness to survive a belated search for infinite detail; in this way you let the lava grow cool…”
— Paul Gauguin

71. “A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.”
— Paul Gauguin

72. “I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom of behavior.”
— Paul Gauguin

73. “The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.”
— Paul Gauguin

74. “Concentrate your strengths against your competitor’s relative weaknesses.”
— Paul Gauguin

75. “There are two sorts of beauty; one is the result of instinct, the other of study. A combination of the two, with the resulting modifications, brings with it a very complicated richness, which the art critic ought to try to discover.”
— Paul Gauguin

76. “With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.”
— Paul Gauguin

77. “Many excellent cooks are spoilt by going into the arts.”
— Paul Gauguin

78. “All the joys – animal and human – of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary.”
— Paul Gauguin

79. “Brave as you may be, wise even as you may be, you tremble when the earth trembles. That is a sensation common to everybody and which no one would ever deny.”
— Paul Gauguin

80. “The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
— Paul Gauguin

81. “Perhaps I have no talent, but all vanity aside – I do not believe that anyone makes an artistic attempt, no matter how small, without having a little – or there are many fools.”
— Paul Gauguin

82. “Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature’s means.”
— Paul Gauguin

83. “I am entering into the truth, into nature.”
— Paul Gauguin

84. “By the combination of lines and colors, under the pretext of some motif taken from nature, I create symphonies and harmonies that represent nothing absolutely real in the ordinary sense of the word but are intended to give rise to thoughts as music does.”
— Paul Gauguin

85. “A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business.”
— Paul Gauguin

86. “I am a great artist and I know it. It’s because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue – which is what many people think I am, for that matter.”
— Paul Gauguin

87. “I have tried to establish the right to dare everything.”
— Paul Gauguin

88. “Sometimes people accuse me of being incomprehensible only because they look for an explicative side to my pictures which is not there.”
— Paul Gauguin

89. “A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.”
— Paul Gauguin

90. “Nothing so resembles a daub as a masterpiece.”
— Paul Gauguin

91. “Take care not to step on the foot of a learned idiot. His bite is incurable.”
— Paul Gauguin

92. “But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.”
— Paul Gauguin

93. “In painting one must search rather for suggestion than for description, as is done in music.”
— Paul Gauguin

94. “It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.”
— Paul Gauguin

95. “The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: he is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain.”
— Paul Gauguin

96. “Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow…”
— Paul Gauguin

97. “How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?”
— Paul Gauguin

98. “Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will.”
— Paul Gauguin

99. “Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows…”
— Paul Gauguin

100. “Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionist.”

— Paul Gauguin

101. “If instead of a figure you put the shadow only of a person, you have found an original starting point, that strangeness of which you have calculated.”
— Paul Gauguin

102. “We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves.”
— Paul Gauguin

103. “No one wants my painting because it is different from other people’s peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter’s part and yet won’t accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!”
— Paul Gauguin

104. “It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue.”
— Paul Gauguin

105. “There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.”
— Paul Gauguin

106. “Soon I’ll be old and I’ve done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I’ll become senile before I’ve finished what I’ve undertaken.”
— Paul Gauguin

107. “I was aware that on my skill as a painter would depend the physical and moral possession of the model…”
— Paul Gauguin

108. “When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body.”
— Paul Gauguin

109. “Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.”
— Paul Gauguin

110. “There are tonalities which are noble and others which are vulgar, harmonies which are calm or consoling, and others which are exciting because of their boldness.”
— Paul Gauguin

111. “In art one is concerned with the condition of the spirit for three quarters of the time; one must therefore care for oneself if he wishes to make something great and lasting.”
— Paul Gauguin

112. “A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.”
— Paul Gauguin

113. “Be stingy of nothing but the name of friend, and take care not to waste your insults.”
— Paul Gauguin

114. “Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.”
— Paul Gauguin

115. “On an instrument you start from one tone. In painting you start from several.”
— Paul Gauguin

116. “Do what you like, so long as it is intelligent.”
— Paul Gauguin

117. “Lacking many of the essential implements, it irritated me to be reduced to impotence in the face of artistic projects to which I had passionately given myself.”
— Paul Gauguin

118. “Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth?”
— Paul Gauguin

119. “Don’t paint from nature too much. Art is an abstraction. Derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it, and think more of the creation that will result.”
— Paul Gauguin

120. “It takes very little to bring about a woman’s fall, but you have to lift the whole world in order to lift her.”
— Paul Gauguin

121. “In art there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists.”
— Paul Gauguin