The invention discloses a rear naked-eye three-dimensional (3D) display and a display method. The rear naked-eye 3D display comprises an image display unit, an optical element and a backlight module, wherein the image display unit can provide a display panel of a fully-high-resolution parallax image; the optical element propagates backlight energy to different visual areas in space; and the backlight module is formed by combining a switch and small backlight units, and the brightness of each small backlight unit can be freely controlled. Light which is emitted by the backlight module passes through the optical element, penetrates through the image display unit and then is used for loading the parallax image, so different parallax images can be seen through eyes at different spatial positions, or different images can be seen at different viewpoints. Meanwhile, by controlling the specific brightness combination of the small backlight units in the backlight module, a high-resolution two-dimensional (2D) image can be played. By the invention, under the condition that 3D display is realized, adding of glasses is eliminated, the resolution of the display is prevented from being reduced, and 2D/3D bidirectional switching without resolution reduction is realized.