Jean René Gauguin
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1924 Paris | Sculpture |
Jean René Gauguin (April 12, 1881 in Paris – April 21, 1961 in Copenhagen) was a Franco-Danish sculptor.
He won a bronze medal for Denmark in the art competitions at the 1924 Summer Olympics for his Boxer.
The fourth child of the marriage of Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) and Mette Sophie Gad (1850–1920), Jean René Gauguin was born in Paris in 1881. His family moved to Copenhagen in 1884 where his father briefly and unsuccessfully tried making a living as tarpaulin salesman. Six months on, his father left Copenhagen for Paris and beyond to pursue his life of creativity and wanderlust. Jean René last saw his father at age ten when Paul spent two weeks in Copenhagen before leaving for Tahiti. They had little communication as Jean René spoke no French at that time and his father spoke no Danish.
Jean René was raised in Copenhagen by his mother Mette and maternal grandparents. Albeit from a bourgeois Danish family he was brought up in very modest circumstances. At the age of eight he fell out a third floor window and sustained severe injuries from which he recovered. He left school in 1895 and undertook an 11-month sailor's training program. Thereafter he apprenticed as a carpenter but hated the trade and went back to working as a sailor.
In 1904 shortly after Paul Gauguin's death he inherited three of his father's paintings that he immediately sold. With these funds he traveled throughout Europe, venturing as far as Greece, visiting museums and viewing monuments wherever he went. These travels initiated his long artistic career.
He loved to travel and visited his birthplace, Paris a number times learning French fluently. In 1927 he set off on an extremely long cycling tour of France. Starting in Lyon, he pedaled on to Montpellier, Lyon, Avignon, Narbonne, Toulouse, Orléans, Paris, Dunkerque, and completed the feat with a return leg all the way to Copenhagen. He visited Portugal in 1930 and visited Paris anew in 1937. Despite his wanderlust, his life and work remained rooted in Copenhagen. He was an outspoken socialist, not afraid to make his political views known. In December 1913 Jean René married Clara Federsen (1889–1966), from this marriage was born a son Pierre Sylvester. They settled at Nyhavn 33, Copenhagen but later separated. He married a second time 1935 with cartoonist Sys Poulsen (1909–1999) and from this union was born Lulu Gauguin in 1937. He is buried with a simple gravestone in the Vestre cemetery in Copenhagen.
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