In March 2019, I had a small trip: I was in Germany, visited the old castle, an exhibition about the history of the state of Baden-Württemberg and the art gallery of Stuttgart. There is a good collection of medieval art and a hall with modern expositions. When I studied Literature and Art of the early 20th century at the university and Oscar Schlemmer’s ballet costumes, I didn’t even expect them to be preserved and exhibited in the museum. It was nice to recall the lectures at the University of Freiburg and the student life. Here are the costumes.

I liked this picture, I even bought a postcard with its image. I paid attention to her because I was reading at that time a book about Paul Gauguin “The Moon and Penny” by Somerset Maugham. This is not a picture of Gauguin, it was painted by Otto Muller, but she reminded me of Gauguin.

When we were children and learned at the art school and we have first heard the phrase that Gauguin had left everything and left for Tahiti, we all liked it so much, and somehow it was understood in a positive way. As if he went to a heavenly place, where he has drawn and painted, no one distracted him, and he was able to achieve in his painting what he wanted.

When I read the book of Somerset Maugham, the image of Paul Gauguin became more complicated for me. The novel is a novel, and the sources emphasize that it is not entirely biographical, but I did not expect to see such an opposite hero in Gogen. Maugham presented him as an unpleasant and embittered man, who does not care about anyone or anything, who was tormented by an inner desire to depict something that he himself did not know, and his paintings seemed ugly to everyone. ) he lived his life, not at all interested in art. And then he quit, left the family and went to Paris to live in poverty and to paint. It is not known what kind of person he really was. The novel expresses the idea that in his paintings he approached divine simplicity, the essence of existence and unity with the world.

I have also found a film about Gauguin, I plan to watch it, but it seems to me that there will be just beautiful shots of unity with nature. I do not know why I began to like Gauguin, probably because I still like this idea of ​​leaving everything and going to paint in Tahiti.