Rigaud Benoit

Rigaud Benoit (1911 – 1986) had become, well before his death, one of the three or four most highly prized Haitian artists.

A native of Port-au-Prince, Benoit had been a shoemaker, musician, and taxi driver before making his living as a painter. He had also supplemented his income by painting pottery, pieces he rarely signed or acknowledged.

Benoit was an early member of the Haïtian art movement known as Naive Art, so-called because of its members' limited formal training. The movement was first recognized and promoted by the Centre d'Art, founded in 1944 by the American Quaker and World War II conscientious objector Dewitt Peters.

According to a widely repeated story, Benoit was working as Peters's chauffeur in 1944 when he saw some of the first works displayed at the Centre d'Art. He immediately decided he could do as well as any of the featured artists. Late in life Benoit denied that tale, insisting that he had merely visited the Centre out of curiosity before submitting his first works to Peters. His paintings were immediately among the Centre's most popular.

In the early 1950s Benoit was one of a handful of artists asked to decorate the interior of the Cathedral of Sainte Trinité; his great mural, Nativity, stands above the high altar. (The Catholic archbishop had -- to his subsequent regret -- denied permission for "mere Haitians" to decorate the Roman cathedral. The Episcopal bishop eagerly consented to the project. On seeing the result he exclaimed "Thank God!, they painted Haitians.")

Some of Benoit's later work was surrealist, though he continued to produce scenes of Haitian life -- narrative scenes -- until his death.

Benoit married the daughter of his friend Hector Hyppolite, the first Haitian artist to win international recognition and still the most acclaimed in international art circles. They had four children. Three of them -- Yves Lafontant and Jacques Dorce, both adopted, and Rigaud Benoit, fils -- are also accomplished artists. (Benoit fils lives in New York, his sister in Montreal.)

Benoit's work is characterized by precise draftsmanship, muted colors (compared with most Haitian artists outside the Northern or Cap-Haitien School, and often -- in his narrative paintings -- a sense of humor. His surrealist paintings mostly depict voodoo scenes or deities lwas. (Haïti is, the saying goes, "80 percent Catholic and 100 percent Vodou. In the past century evangelical Protestantism has reduced both figures.)

Benoit worked slowly -- usually fewer than half-a-dozen pieces a year. Following a near-fatal automobile accident early in 1980, his production declined further. He had, by that time, attained a measure of financial security: he owned a comfortable cottage on the outskirts of the Haitian capital.

References

• Galerie Macondo [1]
• A History of Haïtian Art [2]
• Ned Hopkins's Collection of Haitian Art [3]
• Schutt-Ainé, Patricia; Staff of Librairie Au Service de la Culture (1994). Haiti: A Basic Reference Book. Miami, Florida: Librairie Au Service de la Culture. p. 108. ISBN 0-9638599-0-0.