Jacques Enguerrand Gourgue

Jacques-EnguerrandGourgue was born in Port-au-Prince in 1931.He was the son of a French psychiatrist and a Haitian mambo or voodoo priestess. He began painting when barely out of primary school, and quickly achieved world-renowned status. Gourgue's mother is said to have been a mambo, or priestess of voudou. Having had a turbulent and troubled childhood, he turned to painting and joined the Centre d'Art in 1947, when he was 17.Gourgue lived in Spain with a Spanish wife and daughter.

At the age of 17, his work was exhibited in the Museum of Modern art in New York; his painting "The Magic Table" is in the Museum's permanent collection. In 1949, at the age of 18, he won the Gold Medal at the exposition for the Port-au-Prince Bicentennial. Throughout most of the latter half of the twentieth century his work has been almost continuously exhibited in prestigious shows in Europe, North America, and Latin America, including important sales at the New York fine art auction houses Sotheby’s and Christies.

He adopted his own style of painting, instantly distinguishable, featuring the Haitian mountains, skeletal trees, peasants and their huts, and vodou symbolism in an almost surrealistic manner.  Gourgue died in 1996

 Exhibitions:

1948 Museum of Modern Art, New York

2012Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou.  Nottingham Contemporary

 Permanent Collections:

Museum of Modern Art, New York ("The Magic Table")

Published in:

Nadal, Marie-Jose and Gerald Bloncourt. 1986. La PeintureHaitienne, Haitian Arts. Paris: Editions Nathan

Haitian Art (Ute Stebich, 1978)

Farquharson,Alex and Leah Gordon. Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou.  2012. Nottingham Contemporary. Nottingham, England.