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Préfète Duffaut (1923-2012) Le bateau infini, 1980
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Details
Signed and dated ‘Préfète Duffaut 80’ within the lower composition.
Sizes:
Frame: 68.5 × 99 cm | 27 × 39 in
Artwork: 61 × 92 cm | 24 × 36.2 in
Titled by the artist Le bateau infini (The Infinite Boat): a Vodou ceremony aboard an elaborate wooden vessel, its rigging strung with cobwebs and a serpent coiled on the mast, with three ceremonial figures in red and turquoise on deck. The boat sails a looping bay lined with crowds in procession, flanked by two colossal carved heads and, beyond them, Duffaut’s signature ‘imaginary city’ — a fantastical, colour-patched hillside town linked by a bridge, with sailboats scattered across the water. Signed and dated ‘Préfète Duffaut 80.’
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Préfète Duffaut
Préfète Duffaut (1923–2012) was one of the leading figures of the Haitian painting movement centred on the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince, which he joined in 1948 at the encouragement of the American journalist Bill Kraus, having already caught the attention of the Centre’s founder, DeWitt Peters, a few years earlier. Born in Cyvadier, near Jacmel, he began as a boat-builder alongside his father before turning to painting, and boats and harbours remained a lifelong subject alongside his best-known invention: the ‘imaginary city,’ fantastical hillside towns of winding staircases and radiant, patchwork architecture blending Vodou and Catholic imagery.
In 1950–51 he was one of five Haitian painters — with Castera Bazile, Philomé Obin, Rigaud Benoît and Wilson Bigaud — commissioned to paint the murals of the Cathédrale Sainte-Trinité in Port-au-Prince, contributing ‘The Temptation of Christ’ and ‘The Processional Road’; the cathedral and its murals were destroyed in the 2010 earthquake. His work is held by the Museum of Modern Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Figge Art Museum and the New Orleans Museum of Art, among other collections. He died in Port-au-Prince in 2012.
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