LE CENTRE D’ART > About Us
Le Centre d’Art is a public interest institution founded in 1944. A cradle for Haitian art, it has helped several generations of renowned artists from Hector Hyppolite to Edouard Duval Carrié.
Historically,Le Centre d’Art has simultaneously been an educational center, gallery and reference institution for the promotion of Haitian art. The earthquake on January 12, 2010 severely affectedLe Centre d’Art. After the collapse of the building and the death of its director, the site remained closed for four years.
In November 2014, Le Centre d’Art reopened its doors for its 70th anniversary with a temporary layout. Since then, the institution has started to work once again with the public and artists. We are also working on enhancing the Center’s heritage (collection, archives) and developing a total reorganization project for the future.
Our Mission
Le Centre d’Art remains faithful to its original mission and continues to improve it in order to adapt to contemporary issues:
> Find, educate and mentor Haitian artists. Identify talent, enable creation and circulate it for the benefit of the entire art world.
> Document and display Haiti’s significant visual arts heritage. Offer quality access to Haitian art to both the public and professionals.
ACTU > Conference - Paskö, painting restlessly
As part of the conference series, the Centre d’Art is pleased to invite you to a conference-talk by Ronald Mevs and Delano Morel entitled “Paskö, Painting restlessly” on Wednesday, June 06th, 2018 at 5:30 pm.
In a post-1986 Haiti where economic, social and artistic references were totally shaken, everything is in question!
As the rural exodus ensued, the boundaries between town and country became blurred, making irrelevant the social construct about the remote countryside and the use of Creole. So, here stands another Haiti that needs to be told… and to be told differently! The loss of artistic and financial support in the manner of Dewitt Peters or Tiga and Maud Robart – which have brought to light respectively the so-called “naive” artists or those of the Saint-Soleil movement – is pushing new generations of artists to create differently, changing not only materials but also paradigms.
Should we talk of a new era in Haitian visual art? Delano Morel and Ronald Mevs propose to tackle the question while trying to situate Paskö’s work in the history of pictorial movements.
Delano Morel is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fondation Culture Création.
Ronald Mevs is a painter and sculptor. Born in Port-au-Prince, he studied graphic arts in the United States. Later he immerses himself in the works of Wifredo Lam and Lucien Price to develop the Afro-Caribbean current in Haiti. Ronald Mevs participated in the exhibition “Haiti, Two centuries of artistic creation “held at the Grand Palais (Paris) in 2015.
CLASSES & ACTIVITIES > Monotype Workshop with KILLY
The monotype is a printing process that eschews engraving and etching techniques and only produces one single copy. It is done by painting typographic ink onto a non-porous material like glass, metal or Plexiglas. These three-hour workshops take place over the course of one month.
Saturday, october 24 and 31, november 7 and 14, 2015 from 9 am to 12 pm
Patrick Ganthier, aka, KILLY
Artist and sculptor, Killy worked intensely on engraving when he was living in Montreal. He represented Haiti in the Venice Biennial and regularly exhibits abroad. Upon his return to Haiti, we are delighted that he has chosen to share his experiences and expertise at the Center.
Ages 14 years and older
Maximum number of spots: 25 people
Material entirely provided for by the Center
HTG 500 for annual registration to the Center
HTG 4,000 for the total duration of the workshop (4 classes)
THE HAITIAN ART GATEWAY > LIAUTAUD Georges
Georges LIAUTAUD was born in Croix des Bouquets in 1899. He studied in Port-au-Prince and then worked at the Haitian-American Sugar Company (HASCO) where he repaired the train tracks for the sugar industry.
In the 1940s, he opened his own forge where he fabricated mechanical parts as well as crosses for the cemetery. DeWitt Peters discovered him in 1953 and encouraged him to dedicate himself to sculpture. Thus, it was Georges Liautaud who gave birth to a new movement of metal sculpture. Honored by famous art critics such as André Malraux, Selden Rodman and Jean-Marie Drot, Georges Liautaud, an emblematic figure of Haitian art, died at the age of 92 in 1992.
He was a part of the famous exhibit “Les Magiciens de la terre (The Magicians of Earth)” and his works have been exhibited internationally in places such as the Grand Palais, the Centre Pompidou, the Abbaye de Daoulas, the Fowler Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Frost Museum, the Bass Museum, the Halle Saint-Pierre and the Musée de Montparnasse. His work is part of the permanent collections at the MoMA in New York, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Davenport Museum, the Waterloo Museum, the Huntington Museum of Art, the Figge Art Museum, the Fond national d’art contemporain de France, the Musée national d’art moderne de Paris, the Musée de l’OEA, Le Centre d’Art, the Musée d’Art Haïtien du Collège Saint-Pierre and the Musée de Panthéon National Haïtien.
