Wilson Bigaud (29 January 1931 – 22 March 2010) was a

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

an painter.

Biography

Born in

Port-au-Prince Port-au-Prince ( ; ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Haiti, most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2022 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The me ...

, Bigaud first worked with clay before becoming a

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

. At the age of 15, he was introduced to DeWitt Peters (who in 1944 founded the ''

Centre d'Art Le Centre d'Art, also known as Centre d'Art d'Haïti, is an art center, art school and art gallery located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It was founded in 1944 by American Watercolor painting, watercolorist DeWitt Peters and several prominent Haitians ...

'' in Port-au-Prince) by Hector Hyppolite. Peters suggested he turn his talents to painting. Thus Bigaud joined the ''Centre d'Art'', and began to paint under the direction of Maurice Borno. Early on, he demonstrated his abilities, by quickly assimilating innovations of a sophisticated painter (balance, movement, rhythm, pattern, contrast, unity and emphasis). Together with Jacques Enguerrand Gourgue, he belongs to a select group of artists who are more than just "naïve" and "primitive". In 1950, at the age of 19, Bigaud won second place for a painting entitled ''Paradise'', at an International Exhibition in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

In 1954, one of his engravings was presented in an exhibition at the

Museum of Modern Art in New York The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, and includes over 200,000 works of arc ...

(MoMA), and still features in the museum's collection, along with a painting titled ''Murder in the Jungle''. In 1951, together with

Castera Bazile Castera Bazile (7 October 1923 – 27 February 1966) was a Haitian painter. Born in Jacmel, Bazile painted several murals in the Holy Trinity Cathedral, Port-au-Prince, Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. He won the grand prize at the Caribb ...

, Philomé Obin,

Préfète Duffaut Préfète Duffaut (1 January 1923 – 6 October 2012) was a Haitian painter. Biography Born in Cyvadier, Sud-Est, near the seaport of Jacmel, where he lived and worked. The painter Pauleus Vital (1918–1984) was Duffaut's half-brother, ...

, Toussaint Auguste and

Rigaud Benoit Rigaud Benoit (1911–1986) had become one of the three or four most highly prized Haitian artists well before his death. Early life A native of Port-au-Prince, Benoit had been a Shoemaking, shoemaker, musician, and taxi driver before making his ...

, Bigaud decorated the walls of the Holy Trinity Cathedral (destroyed during the

2010 earthquake Earthquakes in 2010 resulted in nearly 165,000 fatalities. Most of these were due to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which caused an estimated 160,000 deaths, making it the 8th deadliest earthquake in recorded history. Other deadly quakes occurred in ...

) of

, by painting

mural A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' ...

s. His contribution depicted the

Marriage at Cana The wedding at Cana (also called the marriage at Cana, wedding feast at Cana or marriage feast at Cana) is a story in the Gospel of John at which the first miracle of Jesus, miracle attributed to Jesus takes place. In the Gospel account, Jesus ...

. These murals were some of the finest examples of Haitian art. His works are usually realistic dramatizations of native life, and he is considered as one of the major figures in Haitian painting.

Biography

References

Further reading