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How did Paul Gauguin use color and line to create emotion in his paintings?

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Self-portrait painting by Paul Gauguin showing the artist with a mustache, yellow halo, and stylized plants against a vivid orange background with green and red fruit. — Paul Gauguin Self-portrait by Paul Gauguin, oil on wood, 1889; in the Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 79.2 × 51.3 cm.

Paul Gauguin rejected the objective, naturalistic approach of Impressionism in favor of a more personal, spiritual expression, a method he termed Synthetism. To evoke specific emotions and ideas rather than merely replicate a scene, he utilized several key techniques:123

Pure Color: Gauguin moved away from the study of light effects, instead employing broad, flat planes of intense, pure color without traditional shading or modeling. He often used exotic and sensuous color harmonies to create poetic, evocative images.123
Simplified Line: He utilized strong, clear outlines—often wide and dark—to enclose these color areas, a style sometimes referred to as Cloisonnism. This decorative, two-dimensional arrangement helped fuse the subject’s form with the intended feeling or "major idea".14
Abstraction: Gauguin believed art should be an abstraction derived from nature while "dreaming before it," rather than a direct copy. By simplifying forms and abandoning traditional perspectival space, he aimed to synthesize the painting's formal elements with the viewer's emotional and spiritual experience.243