#trois femmes

Painting: Oil on canvas, 68 x 73.5 cm. State Hermitage Museum.

Also see: more paintings of three women (yep that's a tag) as well as Gauguin's Two Tahitian Women with Mango.

Gauguin spent the last years of his life (from 1895) in Polynesia. The artist's imagination combined his impressions of Tahiti with what he learned of ancient cultures to create an enigmatic and exotic world full of symbolic images. He felt that the world of the so-called "savages" had preserved that natural harmony which had been lost by the "civilization" of Europe. According to the internet, the central figure recalls one depicted on a relief in the Borobudur Temple on the island of Java.

All of that aside, though, Three Tahitian Women Against a Yellow Background is a decorative piece that achieves harmony between areas of color and rhythmic lines. There is particular grace and plasticity in the poses of the three women. The distortion of perspective and the strong lines—hallmarks of fauvism—manage to draw attention to the subject without becoming the subject themselves. I always marvel at Gauguin's ability to blend distortion with naturalism; for me, his works stand apart from any one genre.