Pierre, Fernand

PIERRE, FERNAND
Fernand Pierre – was born in Carrefour, an infamous slum near Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 1919 and died in 2002. His career began as a carver of wood, when he fashioned small animals and other small wares for sale. In 1947 he was discovered by the Centre d’Art where he continued with his ceramics studies. Later, he started to paint and established his reputation as one of the founding fathers of Haitian naive art. His works have been exhibited in numerous countries around the world.

The artist’s work gradually evolved from naturalistic into voudou themes such as the loa “Sirene” – a variation of Erzulie – as he aged and his work matured. These mermaids, along with his luxuriant trees with flowers and fruit, are the themes most valued by collectors.

Fernand Pierre is one of the five seminal artists who painted the world-renowned murals of the St-Trinite Cathedral in Port-au-Prince in 1951, a masterpiece of naive art documented in many books and articles on this subject. His works are treasured by collectors world-wide. Several of the paintings in our collection date from the 1970s and 1980s and are unusually good examples of his earlier work.