D’où venons-nous ? que sommes-nous ? où allons-nous ? – Paul Gauguin

2014
Acrylic on linen canvas
200 x 110 cm
3900€

Tribute to paul Gauguin 

I love Gauguin’s work very much, and his tahity color palette.

I was looking for women standing up and not lying down, exposed to the viewer… passive…
I chose the figure picking an apple from the 1898 painting titled : “Where are we from ? What are we ? Where are we going ?”. A superb allegory of the human destiny.

I quite like this silhouette, and as I was drawing it I realised it was probably that of a man, so I decided to make it into an androgynous woman.

I have chosen to revisit the works of great Masters, nude women painted by men, and not just any of them : Sandro Botticelli, Gustave Moreau, Paul Gauguin, Gustave Courbet…

I wanted to represent bodies of women alive, present, carnal, that represent all women, from ancestral to modern, from androgynous to pulpy.
I took my inspiration from the Apsaras, voluptuous, radiating an accepted femininity.

By painting the bodies black, I wanted to pay tribute to black women, and as I love Hugo Pratt’s work, I have taken the liberty to interpret these paintings cartoon style, white background, black lines : this stresses even more these bodies of tattooed women.
Tattoos to remind us that certain women have been tattooed for painful reasons, political, or on the contrary characteristic symbols, positive, that certain tribes vindicate.
Transform these tattoos into lace, as an act of repair : the nude woman protected by these small dots, creating an impression of a precious body.