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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Paul Gauguin

Head of a Young Girl

1893 - 1894
Gres.
15.2 x 26 x 18 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.DEC99.36
)
ROOM F
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
In 1886, as Gauguin was moving away from Impressionism in his search for a simplified, synthetic style of primitivist inspiration, he met the ceramicist Ernest Chaplet (1835-1909) and worked with him in his studio, learning the techniques of the craft. Between 1893 and 1895, during a visit to France after his first stay in Tahiti, Gauguin spent a further period of intense experimentation in Chaplet's studio. This piece dates from that time. Another version of it, known as The Tahitian Woman, is in the Musée d'Art Moderne, Geneva.

Most characteristic of Gauguin's interest in ceramics are these vases in the form of a human head, together with his famous and disturbing self-portraits as a mug or a tobacco jar of the years 1889-90. In pieces of this kind, influences of the most varied ethnic origins are merged together. Of these, the most important is the anthropomorphic pottery so common in pre-Colombian art, for example, in the cultures of ancient Peru, such as the Nazca or the Mochica. It must not be forgotten that Gauguin felt very proud of his Peruvian ancestors and used to recall his childhood in that country with nostalgia. Secondly, this young girl's head, with its closed, bulging eyes, also recalls the over-modelled human skulls of various Oceanic cultures. In particular, the irregular outline of the opening suggests a broken skull, perhaps a reference to cannibalistic practices. Whatever the case, the piece is presented as a kind of ceremonial bowl that embodies the spirit of an ancestor or a god. The coils of hair on the two sides of the head are adorned with the figures of a dog and a mouse. Although their symbolic meaning is obscure, these two animals appear in medieval iconography as familiars of the devil. Perhaps, once again, Gauguin associated the female figure with a malign, supernatural presence and a temptress.

Guillermo Solana

19th CenturyObjectGres
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Head of a Young Girl. Cabeza de muchacha, 1893-1894
Head of a Young Girl
Paul Gauguin

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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Head of a Young Girl. Cabeza de muchacha, 1893-1894
Head of a Young Girl
Paul Gauguin

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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