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SINCE 1974

This is Room 74 . Haitian Paintings by Fritz St. Jean .

Fritz St. Jean is one of the best of the third generation of Haitian Artists. He was a member of the group that worked together in the mid 1970's in the atelier of the Galerie Monnin on the Grand Rue in Port-au-Prince. Some of his contemporaries in those heady creative days were the Blaise brothers, Serge, St. Louis, Fabolon and Andre, Simil, Jean-Louis Senatus, Eric Jean-Louis, Murat St. Vil, Fritzner Lamour, the Sanon brothers, and others. Some of these painters have been referred to in print as "The School of Jacmel", a misnomer; they should more properly be known as "The School of Monnin" because it was Michel Monnin who organized and nurtured them.

Fritz emigrated to New York in 1985 and worked as a waiter to support his family; he didn't stop painting and in fact by the end of the 80's his work had become stronger and more charged with political and social themes. Two monumental canvases of his graced the entrance and exit doors of the landmark show "The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou" at the Natural History Museum in New York in 1998.

 

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# 178 Fritz St. Jean
20x24' Oil on Canvas
" Flying Pigs"
1991 framed in wood

SOLD! March 2006

* In the early 1980's, all of the black pigs, cochon creole, in Haiti were confiscated and destroyed because it was decreed by the US Department of Agriculture that these pigs were infected with Swine Flu and posed a serious threat to livestock throughout the hemisphere. The black pigs were to be replaced with a white pig from the USA. The cochon creole was like a savings account for the Haitian peasant. They foraged and would eat almost anything and grew to a size ideal to feed a wedding or funeral party or a baptism, so they could be sold for enough money to pay a child's tuition or some other predictable expense. The white pigs required special feed and grew to hundreds of pounds ; they were not easy to sell. The disappearance of the black pig was a severe economic loss for Haitian peasants and they resented Jean-Claude Duvalier for allowing it to happen.

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To see some paintings from the St. Jean Archives, paintings that are not for sale, click here