Paul Gauguin

Paul Gauguin was one of modern art's primary predecessors. He developed a colorful, decorative style with far-reaching simplification, large color planes and well-marked contours. It was in the South Pacific, in Tahiti, that his paintings reached full bloom with their bright colors and large, decorative surfaces.

Gauguin was born in Paris June 7, 1848, but came to grow up - when he was between three and seven years - in Peru in South America with his half Peruvian mother and his sister, after his father died on the journey there. When he was seven, the family returned to France, where young Paul came to live with his grandfather in Orleans. When he was 17 he went to sea and a few years later he worked in Paris as a bank clerk.

In 1873 he married a Danish woman, Mette-Sophie Gad. Together they had five children before the family life was shattered and the couple separated. Gauguin had by now started his art career and was soon to develop his distinctive style. Some time later he lived in Brittany, where he painted peasants, villages and landscapes. He had some influence on the group of young painters called the Pont Aven School. One time, he worked with fellow artist Vincent van Gogh in Arles, but left after van Gogh began to behave threateningly and confused (and cut off a piece of one ear).

Gauguin despised Western civilization - all the artificial and mannered - and longed for a more pristine and original place. This desire led him to Polynesia, to Tahiti and the Marquesas, where he first settled in the period 1891-93 and then from 1895 until his death May 8, 1903. He was only 54 years when he died.

Paul Gauguin's birth chart looks like this:

Paul Gauguin, June 7, 1848, 10:00, Paris, France

(Source: Astro Databank)

Gemini and Leo are prominent signs. The four elements are in balance, like the three modi (cardinal, fixed, and variable signs). The First, Tenth and Eleventh Houses are highlighted. The many planets in the fourth quadrant and in the eastern and southern hemispheres suggest a person who wants to make his mark on the world, who is self motivated and wants to achieve results and success in public life. The Moon is in its growing phase.

The Sun in Gemini in the Tenth House, which is entirely unaspected, except for a semi-square to Mars, rules the Leo-Ascendant, which is in conjunction with the Moon in Virgo. Artistic Venus in Gemini, which shares the Tenth House with the Sun and which rules the MC in Taurus, is forming a T-square with the sensitive Moon in Virgo and the artistic Neptune in its own sign Pisces. Also Saturn and the South Lunar node are in Pisces. We can see how the horoscope paints a picture of the headstrong (unaspected Sun) but curious (Gemini), sensitive (Moon) and artistically gifted (Venus, Neptune, Pisces) painter. Besides the opposition to Neptune the Moon also makes a trine to Pluto in Aries in the Ninth House. Here emerges the image of a powerful and intense personality who gladly accepts challenges.

Pluto in Aries in the Ninth House is in conjunction with Uranus, suggesting the artist's high ideals and revolutionary mind. They form squares with Jupiter and Mars in the Eleventh House. Here I think you can see both Gauguin's ideals and dreams of a better world (the planets in the Eleventh House) and his hands-on realization of the dream - the settlement on Tahiti in the South Pacific (Ninth House: exotic, far away places). Pluto in Aries in the Ninth House also rules the artist's Fourth House (home, foundation) in Scorpio. Also Jupiter, the ruler of the creative Fifth House, being exalted in Cancer, gives the image of the dream and idealization (Eleventh House) of a home (Cancer) in a distant land (Jupiter).

Creative Mars is in Leo on the Twelfth House cusp and forms a T-square with Pluto in Aries and Chiron in Scorpio. A strong internal propulsion (Mars in Leo on the Twelfth House cusp) drives him to go in-depth to explore the deeper mystery of life and also its darker side (Pluto, Scorpio). Again Pluto in the Ninth House is suggesting how this deep-going search brought the artist to a far off land and a foreign culture.

Pluto's conjunction with Uranus in Aries shows the other side of the same longing and searching: the rebellious rejection of Western civilization and his desire to abandon it and leave it behind to look for a larger depth of life in the more primary and pristine realm of the South Pacific.

Mercury in Cancer in the Eleventh House and the Moon in Virgo in the First House are in each others signs and show the importance of feeling - the colorful and vivid - for the artist. Mercury also forms a trine to Neptune in Pisces in the Seventh House. Neptune, who is in opposition to the Moon and forms a square to Venus, reflects the spiritual content of Gauguin's paintings - his quest to express a spiritual sentiment and reach out spiritually to others through his paintings.

Paul Gauguin: Two Tahitian Women