Paul Gauguin, Oviri (Sauvage), 1894, partially glazed stoneware, 75 × 19 × 27 cm (29.5 × 7.5 × 10.6 in), Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Oviri (Tahitian for savage or wild)[1] is an 1894 ceramic sculpture by the French artist Paul Gauguin. In Tahitian mythology, Oviri was the goddess of mourning and is shown with long pale hair and wild eyes, smothering a wolf with her feet while clutching a cub in her arms. Art historians have presented multiple interpretations—usually that Gauguin intended it as an epithet to reinforce his self-image as a "civilised savage". Tahitian goddesses of her era had passed from folk memory by 1894, yet Gauguin romanticises the island's past as he reaches towards more ancient sources, including an Assyrian relief of a "master of animals" type, and Majapahit mummies. Other possible influences include preserved skulls from the Marquesas Islands, figures found at Borobudur, and a 9th-century Mahayana Buddhist temple in central Java.
Gauguin made three casts, each in partially glazed stoneware, and while several copies exist in plaster or bronze, the original cast is in the Musée d'Orsay. His sales of the casts were not successful, and at a low financial and personal ebb he asked for one to be placed on his grave. There are only three other surviving comments of his on the figure: he described the figure as a strange and cruel enigma on an 1895 presentation mount of two impressions of a woodcut of Oviri for Stéphane Mallarmé; he referred to it as La Tueuse ("The Murderess") in an 1897 letter to Ambroise Vollard; and he appended an inscription referencing Honoré de Balzac's novel Séraphîta in a c. 1899 drawing.[2]Oviri was exhibited at the 1906 Salon d'Automne (no. 57)[3] where it influenced Pablo Picasso, who based one of the figures in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon on it.[4]
^Maurer, 162
^Landy, 242, 244–46
^"1906 Salon d'automne". Exposés au Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, 1906. Retrieved 29 August 2015
Oviri (Tahitian for savage or wild) is an 1894 ceramic sculpture by the French artist Paul Gauguin. In Tahitian mythology, Oviri was the goddess of mourning...
under 30 inches high, Oviri has an awesome presence, as befits a monument intended for Gauguin's grave. Picasso was very struck by Oviri. 50 years later he...
The Wolf at the Door (Danish: Oviri, French: Gauguin, le loup dans le soleil) is a 1986 Danish-French biographical drama film written and directed by...
settlement was at Tarakiri and later left for Oviri Ogor (current site of Ogor Techinal College). Ughene later left Oviri Ogor and founded Ovwodoawanre (Old Settlement)...
a Serpent Claudel: The Mature Age Delaplanche: Virgin with a Lily Jacquemart: Rhinocéros Gauguin: Objet décoratif carré avec dieux tahitiens - Oviri...
world's first aluminium statue, Piccadilly Circus, London Paul Gauguin, 1894, Oviri (Sauvage), partially glazed stoneware, 75 x 19 x 27 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris...
Courbet (1860), The Seine at Lavacourt by Claude Monet (1880), I Raro te Oviri by Paul Gauguin (1891), Interior (1902), Les Marroniers ou le Vitrail (1894)...
a Serpent Claudel: The Mature Age Delaplanche: Virgin with a Lily Jacquemart: Rhinocéros Gauguin: Objet décoratif carré avec dieux tahitiens - Oviri...
a Serpent Claudel: The Mature Age Delaplanche: Virgin with a Lily Jacquemart: Rhinocéros Gauguin: Objet décoratif carré avec dieux tahitiens - Oviri...
figures that seem to be turning around the same point. Paul Gauguin, 1894, Oviri (Sauvage), partially glazed stoneware, 75 x 19 x 27 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris...
a Serpent Claudel: The Mature Age Delaplanche: Virgin with a Lily Jacquemart: Rhinocéros Gauguin: Objet décoratif carré avec dieux tahitiens - Oviri...
a Serpent Claudel: The Mature Age Delaplanche: Virgin with a Lily Jacquemart: Rhinocéros Gauguin: Objet décoratif carré avec dieux tahitiens - Oviri...
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