CENTRE D’ART DEWITT PETERS

During Second World, as conscience objector, Dewitt Peters, an American painter, is working at Port au Prince Embassy. He is impressed by those artistically untrained painters who express in streets and temples. With the foundation of the « Centre d’Art » in 1944 in Port-Au-Prince, Haitian art sprang forward. Finally, those naive painters were given an environment in which they could develop their skills. They were called the first generation of artists and earned the admiration of the western world. Those talented self-taught artists were Hector Hyppolite, Wilson Bigaud, Castera Bazile, Philome Obin,Robert Saint-Brice and Rigaud Benoit. Voodoo was the most depicted subject in their works. It was the beginning of a later major move, the Haitian Naïve Art.