“In my figures [of his famous painting 'Vision After the Sermon'] I have achieved a great simplicity, which is both rustic and superstitious….. In this picture the landscape and the struggle [between Jacob wrestling with the angel ] exist only in the imagination of the people whom the sermon has moved to prayer. That's why there is a contrast between the people, depicted naturally, and the struggle in its unnatural and dis-proportioned landscape.”

—  Paul Gauguin

Source: 1870s - 1880s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 24: quote in his letter to Vincent van Gogh, c. 1888

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Paul Gauguin photo
Paul Gauguin 41
French Post-Impressionist artist 1848–1903

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