Bigaud, Wilson (1931–)
Bigaud, Wilson (1931–)
Wilson Bigaud (b. 29 January 1931), Haitian painter who has been an integral part of the renaissance of Haitian art. He is hailed as an innovator of the vraiment naïf genre with his paintings of pop-eyed rural folk and people with disproportionate bodies. The renowned artist Hector Hyppolite took Bigaud as an apprentice when the latter was only fifteen years old. Bigaud joined the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince in 1946 and shortly thereafter painted his masterpiece, Miracle at Cana (1950–1951), for the Holy Trinity Cathedral. In this work, all Bigaud's trademark elements are present: a jungle murder, a cemetery, drums, and voodoo images, all bathed in a rich yellow light. His Adam and Eve is considered the best of all Haitian primitive paintings. In the late 1950s Bigaud suffered a series of nervous breakdowns that interrupted and changed his style, after which he became a recluse.
See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Selden Rodman, The Miracle of Haitian Art (1974).
Eleanor Ingalls Christensen, The Art of Haiti (1975).
Madame Shishi, "Les Naïfs Haitiens": An Introduction to Haitian Art and History (1982).
Additional Bibliography
Benson, LeGrace. "Kiskeya-Lan Guinee-Eden: The Utopian Vision in Haitian Painting." Callaloo. 15 (Summer 1992) 726-734.
Karen Racine