Noa Noa: Manao Yupapau ( Watched by the Spirts of the Dead)

Noa Noa: Manao Yupapau ( Watched by the Spirts of the Dead) is a powerful woodcut created by Paul Gauguin between 1893 and 1894. This highly influential print is part of Gauguin's larger Noa Noa series, a body of work developed after his first transformative residence in Tahiti. Unlike the lush, colorful canvases for which he is most famous, Gauguin embraced the challenging, often raw process of the woodcut upon his return to France. He utilized the grain and texture of the wood itself to achieve deliberately coarse lines and intense contrasts, which he felt better reflected the perceived primitivism and cultural authenticity of the Polynesian experience he sought to capture.

The Noa Noa sequence served as illustrations for Gauguin's poetic manuscript chronicling his time abroad, blending memoir, direct observation, and exoticized fantasy. The subject of this specific print is drawn directly from his famous 1892 oil painting, Manao Tupapau, which explores the Tahitian legend of the tupapau, or spirit of the dead. Gauguin depicts a nude female figure lying prone, observed by shadowy, spectral forms that loom in the darkness surrounding her. The heavy black fields and angular carving characteristic of the woodcut intensify the atmosphere of anxiety and supernatural intrusion, translating a moment of psychological vulnerability into a striking visual form.

This work exemplifies Gauguin's decisive shift toward non-Western iconography and visual language, a pioneering movement in modern art that greatly influenced subsequent generations of European artists. The piece solidified the artist’s reputation as a key figure in Post-Impressionism and is an outstanding example of his pioneering work in prints. This important woodcut is held in the permanent collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.