Volpini Suite: The Grasshoppers and the Ants (Les Cigales et les Fourmis)

The print Volpini Suite: The Grasshoppers and the Ants (Les Cigales et les Fourmis) was created by Paul Gauguin in 1889. This rare zincograph is a key component of the Volpini Suite, a seminal group of eleven prints displayed that year at the Café Volpini. Gauguin and his peers organized this independent exhibition concurrently with the official 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, using the venue to promote their radical shift toward Synthetism and Symbolism, moving away from Impressionist principles.

The technical process of the zincograph, a planographic printmaking method using zinc plates, allowed Gauguin to employ heavy contours and large, flat areas of tone. This simplification emphasized form and subjective emotion over descriptive detail, an aesthetic signature of his Symbolist period in France. Although titled after Jean de La Fontaine’s famous moralizing fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant, Gauguin used these evocative names to underscore broader themes of life, labor, and the tension between modern and primitive existence. The raw, simplified forms seen across the Volpini Suite demonstrate the artist’s commitment to forging a new visual language.

This work represents a crucial transitional moment in Gauguin’s career, establishing the bold, flattened style that would characterize his later periods. The entire suite is classified as highly important among early modern prints. This specific impression of this influential work resides in the permanent collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, helping to inform scholarship on the beginnings of modern printmaking. Although the original prints are scarce, the widespread study of this 1889 series continues to inform research, even as similar works enter the public domain.