In the spring of 1891, an elegant and comfortable slip named Océanien crosses the Indic bound to the French colonies in New Caledonia. Its picturesque passengers, divided into three classes under the deck, covers from rich, important functionaries and landowners, to young people of humble origins who travel to the colonies searching a future that the old France was not able to assure. In other words, the transoceanic ship was an authentic human zoological, a circus with so many actors in which nobody would notice the presence of a middle age man, with a powerful moustache and empty gaze, who spent the neverending hours sitting on the deck, looking to the horizon. Nevertheless, that anonymous personage that occupied one of the humble third-class cabins was not a nobody. He was an admired painter called Paul Gauguin, who travelled to Tahiti searching an artistic redemption, a comeback to the primitive an exotic that could help him to find the way in which his Art could be purified. In his own words, "Occident is rotten (.) and anyone who is like Hercules can find new strengths travelling to far-away places. And coming back one or two years after, solid"

Nevertheless, Gauguin's travel was not exactly a globetrotter's odyssey. In fact, he ordered that the ambassador would personally welcome him at Papeete 's harbour, as an official guest of the French Government. In addition, Papeete -the Tahitian capital- was not the tropical paradise that it could be in past times, the exotic and mysterious town find by the great travellers as the legendary Captain Cook. The colonists -civilians or militaries, and, of course, religious- had corrupted the town with all miseries customs of a colonial capital. However, there still persists, in the towns more distant from the capital, an important part of the autochthon and primitive culture that Gauguin was searching.

WAS GAUGUIN A COLONIZER?

In the last decades, the critics and historian -much more documented, perspicacious, and also malicious than in past times- have found in this welcome and in Gauguin's paternalist attitude in his first years (when he describes the Polynesians as "meek and even fool") some intentions comparables to those of the first colonizers, trying to impose to the natives the customs and Faith of the Old Continent. Nevertheless, this matter is not so simple.

In "Ia Orana Maria" ("Salve, Maria") ( New York , Metropolitan Museum ), a work dated 1891, his first year in Tahiti , Gauguin has translated to the exotic South Pacific the Catholic themes: the Madonna and the child, and even the two women in adoration and the golden-winged angel in the background, are clearly Polynesian natives. Here Gauguin introduces the Catholic Faith in the local culture, making the natives the protagonists of it. Nevertheless, this painting, which is very different to the classical iconography, to the point of that we can't determine with certain if is an Annunciation or an Adoration , is followed by many works in which the ancestral beliefs of the natives are the protagonists, as in "Manao tupapau" ("The spirit of the dead watches you" (Buffalo, Albright-Knox Art Gallery), considered by Gauguin himself as one of the masterworks of his first Tahitian period. The artist talked about the painting in these words: " This people have a traditional fear to the spirit of dead people (.) I have represented the apparition as a simple little woman because the girl (.) can only see it as a person that she met, a person like herself"

With this painting, Gauguin would progressively abandon the Catholic thematic and begin to introduce himself in the native beliefs, although he would recover the first in some paintings as " Te Tamari No Atua" ("The birth of Christ") (Munich, Neue Pinakothek) or " Maternité (two versions, one in the Ermitage and another recently sold at Sotheby's for an astronomical price) These ancestral beliefs would achieve a predominant position not only in his artistic oeuvre, but also in his personality. The Catholic "colonizer" turns into a ferocious detractor of the Catholic Church, while in his interior he begins to accept the primitive native beliefs, as we can see in " The white horse" (Paris, Museé de Orsay), in the supreme Matamua - in past times- from the Thyssen collection, which depict a legendary valley in the middle of the island, in which its inhabitants "still lives as in past times"; or in the many statuettes of Gods and idols that he make in the following years.

IDOLS AND GODS

In the last years of his life, in the Marquises, Gauguin reflects on the Polynesian sculpture tradition: " This Art has disappear because of the missionaries, who have considered that to sculpt, decorate, was fetishism, was an offence to the God of the Catholics". That was true. In fact, at the end of the 19 th century, almost all of the ancient Polynesian wood sculptures had been destroyed by the devastating Christian missions. Gauguin embarks on a epic work: to give back to the natives their destroyed mythology.

Unfortunately, almost all of the sculptures Gauguin creates in Tahiti were carved in a low-quality wood, which caused its premature destruction. Nevertheless, the Orsay Museum in Paris conserves two little statuettes of this creative period: the Idol of the shell and the Idol of the pearl . The date of both sculptures, although inexact, can be situated around 1892. In both figures Gauguin has represented the Polynesian god Taaroa , whose shell contains -according to the Polynesian tradition- the entire universe. But it was in 1894, back in Paris (we'll talk about this comeback in the next chapter) where Gauguin creates his undisclosed masterpiece in sculpture: the statuette of Oviri (Paris, Orsay Museum ), a sinister representation of the Polynesian god of the death and the mourning. The figure, which Gauguin calls La Tueuse ( " The killer") is a disturbing feminine figure of primitive and crude gestures, long hair and huge eyes, which stands over the terrific figure of a dead wolf.

But this iconographic recuperation that Gauguin made is not only visible in the three-dimensional works: in the following years, the artist translates its invented iconography to his paintings, where he find more possibilities: in the canvas, the gods and idols can change its scale, turning into the main protagonists of the scene (" The day of the gods") or in spirits as disturbing apparitions (" Riders in the beach")

THE INTERMISSION IN FRANCE

But Gauguin's life in Tahiti was very distant of being a paradise: to the heartrending solitude and the perennial economical difficulties was added, in the last months of 1892, an illness in his eyes, added to constant diarrheas and coughing up of blood that forced him to be hospitalized for many months. Desperate, he writes to the French Ministry begging him for a repatriation that would occur at the end of the following year.

Back at home, after being hospitalized in Paris in much better sanitary conditions than in the Polynesian islands, and receive the heir of his uncle Isidore, his physical and economical situation improves. He rent a apartment in the French capital and lives there with Annah the Javanese. In addition, Gauguin exhibits fifty of his works in a huge room in the modern Art exhibition in Copenhagen . In other words, nobody could suppose that Gauguin's adventure in the Polynesia could be repeated.

But Gauguin returned. He returned two years later, after discover that he had contracted the syphilis. He returned after a brawl in which his ankle was broken. He returned after paint in Paris a praise, a fantasy of the Tahitian culture, the masterwork entitled " Mahana no Atua" ("The day of the gods" ) (Chicago, Art Institute), in which the goddess Hina is adored by a group of women who danced surrounded by multicolour waters. In short, he returned after realizing that his place was not among the European people. " What a stupid way of life, the European way of life!" In April 3 rd , Gauguin left Europe , to where will never return.

"I'M A CRIMINAL." - BACK IN TAHITI

"I want to end my life here, in the solitude of my shack. Oh, yes. here I'm a criminal, but. what's wrong? Michelangelo was also a criminal."

Back in Tahiti , Gauguin feels liberated, free of any artistic or social corset. In his progressive separation of any vestige of European society, he abandons Papeete and moves to a sack in the middle of the country, perhaps searching that fabulous valley he had depicted in the Matamua

Liberated of these social conventions, Gauguin makes the Tahitian woman the new image of the Artistic Eve. The artist has never hid his admiration for the Tahitian young women, even for the too young ones (his lover Pau'ura is only 14 years old) and in his French intermission he boasted in front of his friends about his conquers, saying that every night native girls assailed his bed " as possessed by evil spirits" (an attitude that would give him a nice syphilis.) The female figure is the protagonist in such famous works as " Te arii Vahine" ("The queen of the beauty" , 1896, Moscow, Pushkin Museum), " Girls with mango flowers" (or "Two Tahitian")" (1899, New York, Metropolitan Museum)

Another paradigmatical work of this period is the famous " Nevermore" ( 1897, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London ), a work in which the female nude is still visible. Nevertheless, something of the old Europe is still present in the work: the painting pays tribute to the famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe that Gauguin had listened at the Café Voltaire. However, the raven, main protagonist of the Poe's story, in which is depicted as sinister and menacing, is in Gauguin's canvas not so important as the strong and vibrant female nude.

WHERE DO WE COME FROM? WHAT ARE WE? WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Gauguin himself affirmed that after painting Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?(1897, Boston , Museum of Fine Arts) he had tried to commit suicide. We can not affirm with certain if this was true or not, but it's a fact that just before painting his masterwork, a series of events followed each other at a dramatic way, like a presage of a tragic end that would happen five years later. First, his economical situation gets almost unsustainable -however, he rejected an amount of money that the Ministry offered him because he considered it a "charity"- while the syphilis and the alcoholism turn his physical situation into a torture. Nevertheless, the toughest hit arrived by mail: in the spring of 1891, a letter informed him of the death of his daughter Aline, at age 21. This tragic event supposed not only the rupture of the artist with his wife -irrationally accusing her of this death- but also his definitive rupture with any vestige of faith. In a devastating letter wrote this year, Gauguin affirms: "My daughter is dead. Now I don't need God."

In this psychical state Gauguin embarks on the epic mission of creating his artistic testament, a work that resumes all his other creations: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? is not only the most colossal canvas that Gauguin painted in his entire life, but also the work that expound the entire philosophical and pictorial doctrine of the artist.

In a striking horizontal format, the canvas follows an inverted chronological evolution, beginning at the left corner with the heartrending figure of an ancient mummy that, in fetal position, covers his ears with the hands; while at the right corner, a baby, symbol of the life and the innocence, is surrounded by three Tahitian young women. At the centre of the picture, the figure of a man who takes a fruit symbolizes the temptation of the man. Structuring the canvas in an inverted chronological order, Gauguin seems to point the primitive, the innocent, as the only one way to the artist.

THE LAST CHORD - FLIGHT INTO THE MARQUISES

In September of 1901, Gauguin left Tahiti and takes up his residence in the Marquises. The reason of this flight is still not clarified: while his admirers suggest that the artist was seeking a new stage to his artistic concerns, many historians note that its physical deterioration was so evident that its popularity among the Tahitian girls was below zero, forced him to too long periods of abstinence. Anyway, Gauguin establishes himself in Hiva Da, the main island of the Marquises archipelago, in the lands owned by the Catholic Church. Just before his trip, he paints a beautiful farewell to Tahiti in his " Idyll in Tahiti" (1901, Zurich , E. G. Buhrle collection)

The female figure is still a fundamental part in his artistic thematic. In " contes barbares" ("exotic legends" , 1902, Essen , Folkwang Museum ) Gauguin once again praises the Polynesian beauty depicting two beautiful girls, sitting in an exotic landscape. Behind them, Gauguin has represented the figure of his friend Meyer de Hann, a Parisian poet. It's quite curious that the figure of the western man is depicting as a demon of feline eyes and sharpening claws.

Nevertheless, Gauguin is now beginning to sense his own death: his physical deterioration is now unstoppable, and the artist is tempted -for the first time in many years- of returning to Europe . However, he is still strong enough to paint. His compositions from these last years are full of metaphors about the death, as is evident in his last masterwork, the two versions of " Riders on the beach" (Essen, Folkwang Museum, and Niarchos collection) In this kind of tribute to Degas racetrack pictures, Gauguin has represented the riders in an apparently endless beach. The whole picture is filled with the melancholic taste of a farewell, predicting the artist's own death a few months after: the riders are quietly approaching to the seaside, where a breaker wave marks the limit between the land and the sea -or between life and death- from where two mysterious, colour-dressed spirits have appeared, perhaps to accompany the alive in their last trip. The fancy coloured work is Gauguin's pictorial testament and an eloquent ode to the Polynesian way of life.

In May 8 th of 1903, in the middle of multiple physical, economical and juridical problems, Gauguin dead. The legend, not always veridical, tells that the natives, informed of the artist's death, begin to shout: "Gauguin is dead! There is no paradise!"