Knowra Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? A monumental painting Paul Gauguin made in Tahiti in 1897–1898, depicting figures at different stages of life in a tropical landscape. Its title frames the scene as a meditation on human existence.
Symbolism (arts) : The use of images, objects, or actions to convey meanings beyond their literal presence. Gauguin arranged figures and objects as signs within a scene that resists a single narrative.
Post-Impressionism : A late nineteenth-century movement whose artists developed personal styles beyond Impressionism's emphasis on transient perception. Gauguin's flattened forms and expressive color belong to this broader artistic shift.
Noa Noa : Gauguin's account of his first stay in Tahiti, published in versions combining text and images. Its constructed account of Tahiti illuminates the imaginative context surrounding Gauguin's island paintings.
D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? (painting) : The 1897–1898 painting by Paul Gauguin depicting figures at different stages of life in a tropical landscape. This is the specific artwork whose title and interpretation anchor the page.
Memento mori : An artistic reminder of human mortality and the inevitability of death. The painting's old woman and crouching figure make mortality part of its life-cycle imagery.
Synthetism : A late nineteenth-century style associated with Gauguin that combines simplified forms, flat color, and symbolic subject matter. Its broad color areas and condensed forms help explain the painting's visual language.
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin's letters : Letters written by Paul Gauguin documenting his artistic plans, relationships, and life in France and the Pacific. Gauguin described the painting's intended reading and its completion in correspondence.
The Yellow Christ : Paul Gauguin's 1889 painting of a crucified Christ in a Breton landscape, rendered in simplified forms and bold color. It shows Gauguin using color and symbolic figures to transform a landscape into an expressive vision.
Tahiti in the works of Paul Gauguin : The body of paintings Gauguin made in Tahiti, drawing on island settings and his constructed vision of Polynesian life. The island setting shapes the painting's imagined world, rather than serving as neutral scenery.
Cloisonnism : A painting style using flat areas of color enclosed by strong, dark contours. The figures' bold outlines connect the work to a style Gauguin developed with other artists.
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