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What ideas about life and death are explored in Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

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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.

In his 1897 masterpiece, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, Paul Gauguin presents an enormous contemplation of the human experience through a series of figures.1

The painting explores the cycle of life and death by depicting a narrative progression that begins with a baby and concludes with a shriveled old woman. This arrangement serves as a visual meditation on the fundamental questions of human existence, framed within a dreamlike and poetic atmosphere that the artist used to convey deep spiritual and emotional states. By utilizing this sequence, Gauguin captures the passage of time and the inevitable transition from birth to the end of life, reflecting his broader artistic pursuit of a primitive, symbolic expression that transcends Western conventions.12