Oviri (Savage in Tahitian) is a stoneware ceramic sculpture created from partially glazed stoneware by the French artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) in the winter of 1894/95. The work depicts the Goddess Oviri, a Tahitian deity of death and mourning, whose name translates as "savage" or "wild". She is shown strangling a blood stained wolf cub at her hip, while another wolf lies dead under her feet. Ultimately the sculpture became Gauguin's grave monument.
Oviri (Savage in Tahitian) is a stoneware ceramic sculpture created from partially glazed stoneware by the French artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) in the winter of 1894/95. The work depicts the Goddess Oviri, a Tahitian deity of death and mourning, whose name translates as "savage" or "wild". She is shown strangling a blood stained wolf cub at her hip, while another wolf lies dead under her feet. Gauguin often used the epithet of Oviri for himself; he saw himself as a "civilised savage" and referred to this sculpture as "La tueuse", The Killer. Shortly before he died he wrote, "I am a savage. And the civilized feel it from the outset: because in my work there is nothing which surprises or ... am a savage in spite of myself." Ultimately the sculpture became Gauguin's grave monument.