Jacques-Enguerrand Gourgue

Jacques-Enguerrand Gourgue (Port au Prince, 1930–1996) was one of Haiti's most renowned painters of the 20th century.

Biography Jacques-Enguerrand Gourgue, still life, oil on masonite with frame by artist, 1960 (private collection)A Port-au-Prince native, Gourgue began painting at an early age and eventually had his works exhibited throughout Europe and the Americas. His father was a French psychiatrist, and his mother said to be 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. "He is beyond dispute the leading figure in modern Haitian painting."

After a turbulent and troubled childhood, Gourgue came to Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince in 1947. The following year his painting "The Magic Table"—an "unprecedented picture" —was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and it is still part of its permanent collection.

During the decades of the 1950s and 1960s his style was greatly influenced by Pablo Picasso, in what is known as his "Spanish period". At that time Gourgue moved to Madrid, Spain, where he married a Spanish woman and had a daughter. He exhibited his work throughout Europe and North America, achieving major successes. Several of his works have been auctioned at Christie's and Sotheby's of New York.

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