Jacques-Enguerrand Gourgue

Place: Port-Au-Prince

Born: 1930

Death: 1996

Biography:

Jacques-Enguerrand Gourgue was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1930 and died in 1996. He was a renowned Haitian painter and one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. Gourgue's father was a French psychiatrist and his mother was a Haitian vodou priestess. He typically painted scenes of rural Haitian life and vodou ceremonies. Gourgue, who had no formal training, often combined flowers, mountains, skeletal trees, peasants and their huts and vodou symbolism, in a personal style that managed to combine surrealism and naive art. His works have been exhibited throughout Europe and the Americas and several of his paintings have been auctioned at Christie's and Sotheby's.