Jacques-Enguerrand Gourgue (1930-1996) Haitian, Oil on Canvas. Signed in lower right. Depicts head profile in background. Bowl of food in foreground. Letter asking about the subject states it is a tableau de ceremonic. The food is part of the preparation for the ceremony. 

Overall: 28 1/2 x 24 3/4 in.

Sight: 24 x 19 3/4 in. 

#7327 . 

Jacques-Enguerrand Gourgue was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1930. His father was a French psychiatrist, and his mother was said to be a Haitian vodou priestess. He began painting at an early age with no formal training, typically depicting scenes of rural Haitian life and vodou ceremonies, often combining flowers, mountains, skeletal trees, peasants and their huts with vodou symbolism, in a personal style that managed to combine surrealism and naive art. After a turbulent and troubled childhood, Gourgue began taking classes at the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince in 1947. Within a year his painting “The Magic Table” was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and it is still part of its permanent collection. In 1949 he won the gold medal of an exhibition commemorating the bicentennial of the founding of Port au Prince, with the young autodidact acknowledged as the foremost Haitian artist of his day. During the 1950s and 60s his style was greatly influenced by Pablo Picasso, in what is known as his “Spanish period.” He moved to Madrid, Spain, where he married and had a daughter. He exhibited his work throughout Europe and North America, achieving major success with his works regularly auctioned off at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. After his divorce he moved back to his hometown, where he painted most of his later work, including a large mural that decorated the flag of Haiti in the Seville Expo of 1992. Gourgue remarried and had two children with his second wife, and died in 1996 from a heart attack.