KunstenaarNorwegiangeb.1911–ov.1976
Paul René Gauguin
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Paul René Gauguin was born on 27 February 1911 in Copenhagen, the son of writer and art critic Pola Gauguin and grandson of the Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. Growing up in a household steeped in art history and debate, he absorbed the European avant-garde not as an abstraction but as a living conversation. He spent formative years in southern France and studied in Rouen before returning to Scandinavia, and it was during fishing trips to Mallorca and Ibiza between 1930 and 1935 that he first began experimenting with woodcut printing techniques.
His formal debut came at the Norwegian Autumn Exhibition (Høstutstillingen) in 1936, where his coloured woodcuts attracted quiet but sustained attention. Over the following decades he became one of the central figures in what would come to be called the Norwegian school of coloured woodcuts, developing new methods for layering colour and varying surface texture that gave his prints an unmistakable atmospheric density. Works such as "Barcelona" (1939-42), rooted in the trauma of the Spanish Civil War, and "Havhest" (1949, now in the National Gallery) demonstrated his range: politically engaged yet formally rigorous.
Beyond printmaking, Gauguin was an active force in Norwegian cultural life as a theatre designer and book illustrator. From 1939 to 1945 he created sets and theatrical motifs for the Young Trøndelag Theatre, and in 1951 he worked for the National Theatre in Oslo. He contributed illustrations to books by the poet Inger Hagerup, and collaborated with Knut Rumohr on decorative commissions for the Olympic Building, Hotel Viking, and the coastal steamer MS Nordstjernen, bringing a graphic sensibility to public and applied contexts.
His work drew on a wide range of visual sources, including Picasso, Max Ernst, Van Gogh, and Braque, without being reducible to any single influence. The imagery in his woodcuts moves fluidly between figurative and semi-abstract registers, often populated by birds, marine life, and human forms that carry an air of mythology or dream.
Gauguin died on 14 February 1976 in Oslo. A posthumous solo exhibition organised by his third wife, Martha Poulsen, was held at the National Museum in 1981, presenting 107 works to the public for the first time as a single retrospective. His work is held in the collections of the Nasjonalmuseet and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
On the Nordic auction market, all 27 known auction lots have appeared exclusively at Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo, reflecting the depth of his connection to the Norwegian art canon. Top results include "Kreps" (1958) at NOK 6,000, "Komposisjon" (1972) at NOK 5,500, and "Gjertrudsfuglen" (1968) at NOK 4,300 - consistent demand for his graphic work at accessible price points.