Philippe Dodard

Philippe Dodard was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on December 29, 1954. The most important influence that he had was at the school of Photo-Mitan (1970) with masters Tiga (Jean Claude Garoute) and Patrick Villaire. Both of them developed the concept of contemporary Haitian art inspired by popular tradition. While with Tiga and Patrick Villaire, he studied the principle of artistic rotation that put the student in contact with the different media as colors, clay, sound, inks, ceramics, poetry, and movement in order to have a complete expression of the inner self, free from any preconceived definition of art.

Dodard is a leading contemporary artist of the Caribbean and the African Diaspora. His artistic evolution was a series of steps, leading to major solo and international exhibitions including, Arte Americas (2008), the Venice Biennale (1999), Biennale of Latin American Drawings, Santo Domingo (1997), and the Biennale of Caribbean and Central America Art, Dominican Republic (1996).

Dodard attained international prominence by rejecting the ‘primitive’, ‘naïve’ classification that dogged Haitian art. Dodard superbly blended Haitian, Caribbean, and African iconographical elements to create deep complex forms. He learned to develop a harmony between painting, sculpture, drawing, words, and sound to really express itself through the essence of love that it finds in every human being. He considers art to be the luminous breath of the human spirit