Description
Le Sourire; Taiti, or Smile; Tahiti, combines a title across the top with a compact arrangement of animals, birds and curling forms. Paul Gauguin made the woodcut in December 1899, printing it on delicate tissue paper. A stylized central form and the surrounding graphic shapes keep the image from reading as an ordinary landscape. Lettering and imagery belong to the same carved surface, making words part of its visual character.
Dark areas and pale interruptions give the composition a lively, compressed rhythm. The eye follows coiling shapes and small creatures while returning to the title that frames them. Gauguin does not offer a single clearly narrated event; the woodcut instead builds associations through the proximity of forms. Its apparent lightness remains open to interpretation, with the suggested smile and place drawing the viewer into an inventive graphic world.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Paul Gauguin collection.
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