Wilson Bigaud - Artist

Wilson Bigaud was born 29 Jan 1931 in Port-au-Prince. Considered a First Generation Haitian Master, he was a member of the artist group founded by Hector Hyppolite. Bigaud first worked with clay before becoming a painter.

At the International Exhibit in Washington, D.C., in 1950, Bigaud won second place for a painting entitled "Paradise," which was subsequently purchased for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He also painted a mural in the Holy Trinity Cathedral of Port-au-Prince which depicted the Marriage at Cana.

In 1957 Bigaud sank into a deep depression and did not paint again until 1962. Some say that he never regained his early brilliance but there are few artists in Haiti or anywhere else who were as able to communicate the subtleties of their culture with brush on canvas.

Wilson Bigaud died 22 Mar 2010.

[Biographic notes from Galerie Macondo.]

[na]. The Naive Tradition: Haiti. Milwaukee Art Center, 1974.

[na]. Peinture Haitienne. Nice: Musee International d'Art Naif Anatole Jakovsky, 1983.

Demme, Jonathan. Island on Fire. Kaliko Press, 1997.

Fernandez Mendez, Eugenio. Le Primitivisme Haitien. 1972.

Knight, Gregory G. Under the Spell: The Art of Haiti. 1983.

Material Culture. Direct From The Eye: The Jonathan Demme Collection of Self-Taught Art. Philadelphia, 2014.

McCarthy Brown, Karen. Tracing the Spirit: Ethnographis Essays on Haitian Art. Milwaukee, 1995.

Nadal-Gardere, Marie-Jose and Gerald Bloncourt. La Peinture Haitienne. 1986.

Rodman, Selden. Renaissance in Haiti. 1948.

-. The Miracle of Haitian Art. New York, 1974.

-. Where Art is Joy. New York, 1988.

Stebich, Ute. Haitian Art. The Brooklyn Museum, 1978.

-. A Haitian Celebration. Milwaukee Art Museum, 1992.