Hyppolite, Hector (1894–1948)
Hyppolite, Hector (1894–1948)
Hector Hyppolite (b. 16 September 1894; d. 1948), Haitian painter and vodun priest. Hyppolite led a simple, hard life in rural Haiti until he was discovered in 1944 by the European surrealist poet and art connoisseur André Breton and the Haitian art patron DeWitt Peters. Hyppolite's primitive paintings brought him immediate international attention and introduced the world to Haitian folk culture. His works were exhibited at a UNESCO show in Paris in 1947 and have spawned many imitators. The paintings of Hector Hyppolite are noted for their free, bold colors, their technical naïvete, and themes drawn from Haiti's unique, syncretic religion and vodun customs. Today his work hangs in many of the world's finest galleries.
See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eleanor Ingalls Christensen, The Art of Haiti (1975).
Selden Rodman, The Miracle of Haitian Art (1974).
Ute Stebich, ed., Haitian Art (1978).
Additional Bibliography
Bourguignon, Erika. "Haiti and the Art of Paul-Henri Bourguignon." Research in African Literatures 35 (Summer 2004): 173-188.
Congdon, Kristin G., and Kara Kelley Hallmark. Artists from Latin American Cultures: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Lerebours, Michel-Philippe. "The Indigenist Revolt: Haitian Art, 1927–1944." Callaloo 15 Haitian Literature and Culture, Part 2 (Summer 1992): 711-725.
Karen Racine