What you see in the new landmark Haitian Art exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC is the result of a love affair that two families have had with the vivid arts of that troubled nation. It all started when Beverley Fox Sullivan and her husband, John, first visited Haiti in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, Kay Heller wanted to become a doctor and worked in a mission hospital in poverty-stricken Cap Haitian. There she too fell for the country and its people. And on discovering Haitian art, that connection was sealed.
After Kay and Beverley met, they found a common interest in both art and philanthropy. Over the course of 30 years they trundled back and forth with ‘boxes and boxes’ of paintings and art objects, selling them all over America and ploughing every dollar they raised back into Haitian charities. During this period Kay met and married Roderick Heller. The two couples became fast friends and keen collectors.
Meanwhile at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, curators were taking a growing interest in Haitian art and its influence on the African diaspora. They then made the unprecedented decision to put together a core collection concentrating on this neglected field of art.
Two years ago the Sullivans and the Hellers received telephone calls from Kanitra Fletcher, the gallery’s associate curator of African American and Afro-Diasporic art. She visited the two families and selected a core of ten paintings from each. These donations form the basis of a new permanent collection, but also a groundbreaking, temporary exhibition called Spirit and Strength: Modern Art from Haiti, which delves into the history and culture of the world’s first black republic.
Most of the participants had links to the Centre d’Art, an important school, gallery and cultural institution founded in 1944 in Port-au-Prince by the American artist DeWitt Peters. This disparate group, largely untrained, forms the backbone of Haitian art, elevating it in the process to an international platform.
Colourful street scenes are often reminiscent (in style if not subject matter) of Hieronymous Bosch, except he would have been unknown to the group. They idealise life on the island, showing clean streets, cheerfully dressed traders or villagers going about their business. Artists such as Andre Normil, billed as one of the fathers of the movement, wanted to show the authorities how they wished to live. ‘If I painted what I was living in literally,’ Normil is reported to have said, ‘either I would be in prison or dead because it is the last thing the government would want to show the world.’
Though he lives abroad now, artist Edouard Duval-Carrié was born in Haiti, and is probably the best known internationally. His paintings and portraits, sometimes with decorated frames, portray mainly spiritual subjects. The secret arts are illustrated by Robert Saint Brice’s dark, powerful studies of voodoo, zombies and priestly figures. Also represented: a rich seam of Rousseau-esque jungle scenes.
‘Spirit and Strength: Modern Art from Haiti’ runs until 9 March at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
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