NO. 40 OF 61
La Ville Imaginaire
Préfète Duffaut (1923–2012)
$4,000
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Size
- 18 × 24 in
- Year
- 1998
- Price
- $4,000
Or email Haitianartdisplay@gmail.com
About the work
A heart-shaped road carries lines of tiny walkers. Jacmel became an endlessly reinvented imaginary city in Préfète Duffaut’s work. Here, the great loop turns a familiar shape into a route to follow. The eye can take in the whole, then return to the people making their way around it, finding movement within a form that feels complete.
Coloured houses crowd hills around a bay. Inside the loop, a long bridge crosses water holding two sailboats. Palms and leafy trees rise between buildings, and a white church stands at the left.
About the artist
Préfète Duffaut was born in Jacmel on 1 January 1923. As a young man he worked with his father, a boatbuilder. In 1948 DeWitt Peters of the Centre d'Art bought his first drawings and urged him to invent his own subjects. In the early 1950s he was one of the painters chosen to paint the murals of the Episcopal Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. His main subject became the imaginary city, built on steep mountains and crossed by roads and bridges, alongside the Virgin Mary, Jacmel and mystical themes. The Spencer Museum of Art holds two of his cityscapes. He died on 6 October 2012.