Publication Date: 12/09/2024 ISBN: 9780571365937 Category:

Wild Thing

Sue Prideaux

Publisher: Faber & Faber
Publication Date: 12/09/2024 ISBN: 9780571365937 Category:
Hardback

£30.00

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Description

A DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, ECONOMIST AND TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024

A vital re-examination of the trailblazing and controversial artist Paul Gauguin – and the first full biography in over thirty years – written by the award-winning author of I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche.

*Gorgeously illustrated with 70 full-colour images*

‘Scintillating.’ FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Immaculate.’ NEW STATESMAN
‘Phenomenal.’ PROSPECT
‘A heroic rehabilitation.’ THE TIMES

Paul Gauguin is chiefly known as the giant of post-Impressionist painting whose bold colours and compositions rocked the Western art world. It is less well known that he was a stockbroker in Paris and that after the 1882 financial crash he struggled to sustain his artistry, and worked as a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama City, and a journalist exposing the injustices of French colonial rule in Tahiti.

In Wild Thing, the award-winning biographer Sue Prideaux re-examines the adventurous and complicated life of the artist. She illuminates the people, places and ideas that shaped his vision: his privileged upbringing in Peru and rebellious youth in France; the galvanising energy of the Paris art scene; meeting Mette, the woman who he would marry; formative encounters with Vincent van Gogh and August Strindberg; and the ceaseless draw of French Polynesia.

Prideaux conjures Gauguin’s visual exuberance, his creative epiphanies, his fierce words and his flaws with acuity and sensitivity. Drawing from a wealth of new material and access to the artist’s family, this myth-busting work invites us to see Gauguin anew.

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