The influential Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin created la Orana Maria between 1894 and 1895. This significant piece is executed as a zincograph, a planographic print technique utilizing a zinc plate rather than a traditional stone matrix. This print medium allowed Gauguin to reproduce and disseminate his iconic Tahitian interpretations of Christian subjects, bridging his earlier painted work with more accessible graphic art.
The imagery directly references the artist’s seminal 1891-1892 oil painting of the same title, where the traditional Biblical figures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus are dramatically recast in a contemporary Polynesian setting. Gauguin frequently merged Catholic iconography with the aesthetics and spirituality he observed in Tahiti, creating a deliberate cultural transposition. In this composition, the figures representing the Virgin Mary and the Christ child are depicted as Tahitian women, offering a powerful reinterpretation of Western religious mythology set against a vibrant tropical background.
Classified technically as a print, this zincograph demonstrates Gauguin’s continued experimentation with two-dimensional surfaces during his mature period. The technical versatility of these prints contributed significantly to the spread of his unique visual language back in Europe. This impression of la Orana Maria is held in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Today, due to the work's historical significance and the date of creation, high-quality public domain prints of this crucial late-career work are widely available for study and appreciation.
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