Liautaud, Georges (1899–1991)

views updated

Liautaud, Georges (1899–1991)

Georges Liautaud (b. 1899; d. 1991), Haitian artist and sculptor. Liautaud, who has been described as Haiti's most consistently original artist, did not begin his career until middle age. He received an above-average education but also expressed an early interest in mechanics. He spent several years in the Dominican Republic working as a repairman for the railroads before returning to Haiti as a blacksmith and manufacturer of hardware. In 1953 DeWitt Peters, the director of the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince, discovered Liautaud's metal crosses and began to commission more such works of pure art. After this Liautaud shifted to one dimensional figures, especially representations of a half-woman, half-fish spirit known as Maîtresse La Sirène. In the early 2000s his unique pieces can be found in galleries in Paris, New York, and Rotterdam.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eleanor Ingalls Christensen, The Art of Haiti (1975).

Selden Rodman, The Miracle of Haitian Art (1974).

Ute Stebich, Haitian Art (1978).

Additional Bibliography

Cerejido, Elizabeth. Lespri endepandan: Discovering Haitian Sculpture. Miami: Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, 2004.

Rodman, Selden. "Cutting Fantastic Figures: Figments of the Master's Imagination." Américas 40:1 (January-February, 1988): 26-30.

                                         Karen Racine

More From encyclopedia.com