The Art of Haitian Master Hector Hyppolite
14 years ago
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 11, 2009
Media Contact:
Greg Svitil, 202.458.6016 / [email protected]
Mystical Imagination:
The Art of Haitian Master Hector Hyppolite
WHAT: “Mystical Imagination: The Art of Haitian Master Hector Hyppolite,” a new exhibition at the
Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States
WHEN: May 12 through July 5, 2009
WHERE: Art Museum of the Americas, 201 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006
OPENING: Monday, May 18 at 6pm
"Mystical Imagination” marks the sole exhibition in Washington of
works by Haitian master Hector Hyppolite during Haiti’s Year of
Hyppolite. Comprised of more than fifty works from public and
private collections, the exhibition reflects Hyppolite’s remarkably
prolific period, from 1945 until his death in 1948.
Born in 1894 in Haiti (whether in St.?Marc or Port?au?Prince has
been the subject of debate), Hector Hyppolite worked cutting
sugarcane, and later claimed to have travelled to Africa by boarding
a freighter ship and traveled around the continent for five years.
He painted houses for a living as early as 1920. He arrived on the
art scene in 1945 when he joined the Centre d’Art, the Port?au?
Prince art gallery and school founded by DeWitt Peters, an
American school teacher who arrived in Haiti in 1940 and was
struck by the work of several artists who eventually came to
exemplify the country’s art. In 1943, Peters noticed intricately
designed flowers and red and green tropical birds decorating the
two front doors of a bar along the roadway between Port?au?Prince
and St.?Marc. A year later, Peters tracked down the artist, inviting
Hyppolite to move into the Centre and paint. Hyppolite chose
instead to work in his own hut near the waterfront, and began to paint tirelessly.
Indeed this was just a beginning of the highly prolific and unfortunately brief period (3 years) of artistic
production that Hyppolite embarked on until his death in 1948 of an apparent heart attack, during which
he produced an estimated 200?300 paintings. His work captured the eyes of Cuban artist Wifredo Lam
and French Surrealist poet André Breton, who purchased five of his paintings, after which Hyppolite’s
work was featured in the 1947 UNESCO international exhibition in Paris. The inclusion of Hyppolite as
well as other contemporaries in the UNESCO exhibits of 1946 and 1947 brought about a global interest in
Haitian art. Hyppolite embraced a free?form approach for which subject matter held a far greater
significance than linear precision.
In the essay Images of Loas, Portraits of Man, former Musée d’Art Haitien du College Saint Pierre director
Gerald Alexis notes that while vévé (a religious symbol for a Vodun “loa” or spirit) imagery “already
existed as a linear and abstract art form prior to Hyppolite’s arrival on Haiti’s art scene,” Hyppolite’s forms
were “dominated by the idea itself wrapped in sensual and perceptible forms (...) establishing an
iconography of the loas.”
Papa Zaca and Papa Ogoun, oil on
Board, From the collection of Jonathan
Demme.
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Hyppolite depicted images of everyday life, national history and politics, Haitian Vodun iconography, and
classical Christian imagery. He continued to work until his death, simultaneously working as a shipbuilder
to provide himself with other means of survival and thus the freedom to strive for greater explorations
through his painting.
The exhibition was curated by Kent Shankle of the Waterloo Center for the Arts (Iowa) who is also co?
President with Cammie Scully of the Haitian Art Society. Mystical Imagination: The Art of Haitian Master
Hector Hyppolite presents the artist’s work as represented by a wide range of paintings from public and
private collections in Haiti and the United States such as the Musee d’Art Haitien du College Saint Pierre in
Port?au?Prince, the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, and four works from the private collection of
film director Jonathan Demme, a prominent collector of Haitian art. Many of the lenders are also
members of the Haitian Art Society.
According to Shankle, “many of Hyppolite’s paintings depict theatre, women, birds, flowers, picturesque
scenery...but even these works, which might on a superficial viewing appear to be simple or purely
secular, are imbued with rich layers of spiritual overtones and undertones, reflective of the deep and
pervasive nature of Vodun in the psyche of Hyppolite, and within the context of the larger Haitian
culture”.
For Fritz Racine, President of the Washington DC Chapter of the Haitian Art Society, this exhibit “is the
result of a labor of love, passion, and commitment of many especially dedicated individuals in the United
States and Haiti” and is an important point of departure for expanded cultural exchange projects with
Haiti in the future.
In conjunction with the exhibit, the Haitian Art Society is planning a celebration in the form of a garden
party which will be held on June 11 from 6?11 p.m. at the Organization of American States. The Society
will also be having their annual conference during the same period from June 11?13. For tickets and
conference information, contact the Waterloo Center for the Arts at 319 291?4490.
For more information and images in high?resolution, contact Greg Svitil at (202) 458?6016 or
[email protected], or visit us on the web at www.museum.oas.org.
This exhibition will be on view at the Art Museum of the Americas (201 18th Street, N.W.) from May 12
through July 5, 2009. Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 10 am?5 pm (closed Mondays and
Federal holidays).
Mystical Imagination is organized in collaboration with the Haitian Art Society Washington Metropolitan
Chapter, the Permanent Mission of Haiti to the Organization of American States, and the Waterloo Center
for the Arts of Iowa.
General Baubou and the Mambo
Oil on paperboard mounted on wood, by 1948
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian
Institution, The Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest, 1981
Sail on the Sea, oil on Board, circa 1947,
Collection of Musee d’Art Haitien du College Saint
Pierre
Haiti
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