Préfète Duffaut
Haitian Voodoo Reine Des Esprits , 1982
Oil on Canvas
35 × 24 in | 88.9 × 61 cm
Copyright The Artist
$ 30,000.00
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Rarely does an artwork surface packed with this much pictorial inventiveness. 'Reine Des Esprits' is one such spiritually and emotionally charged work. It depicts a Haitian Vodou ritual with potent...
Rarely does an artwork surface packed with this much pictorial inventiveness.
"Reine Des Esprits" is one such spiritually and emotionally charged work. It depicts a Haitian Vodou ritual with potent forces at work. It's constructed around a symmetrical composition featuring the Queen of the Spirits in ceremony, set in a complex fantastical landscape. Although a lesser-known Surrealist artist, Prefete Duffaut, with his masterpiece "Reine Des Esprits," stands toe to toe with the great European Surrealist painters; here, he creates a world filled with symbols and meaning built around his unique visual vocabulary. At the top center, "Reine Des Esprits" stands in a Christ-like pose, arms outstretched, with a small red cross above her head. This imagery suggests that Vodou blends traditional West African spiritual practices with French Roman Catholicism. Behind her, a carefully crafted web of concentric black lines forms a circle around which tiny, ant-like people are seen en route to their journey. The circle refers to the cosmos's divine presence.
Climbing ropes toward their spiritual destiny, tiny, ant-like people climb through her outstretched arms, which act as a conduit to her spiritual core. Her dress is composed of alternating white and red pointillist dots that evoke the cosmos. At the bottom, a four-eyed, bearded devil shoots ray-gun lines of blood from his eyes, striking the ground. Tanbou drums, adorned with death symbols and silhouetted half-moon faces, flank him. The base consists of ceremonial bottles, lit candles, and offerings evenly spaced on flat ground. Graphically, the work has the distinctive style of Duffaut, but one could make comparisons to the naive British painter L. S. Lowry "matchstick men" and other European Surrealist painters such as Miró, who also used flat shapes and bold, evocative color, depicting objects steeped in symbolism. Taken as a whole, Duffaut's "Reine Des Esprits" is a Haitian surrealist masterpiece, deeply thought out and executed with polished complexity, in which thin black lines contrast with broad areas of flat color.
Signed, and dated in the lower center. Prefete Duffaut, 82, Reine Des Esprits Provenance: Georges Nader, Collection Mark Seidenfeld, New York. Duffaut in Select Museum Collections: MoMA, NY , Milwaukee Art Museum and others
"Reine Des Esprits" is one such spiritually and emotionally charged work. It depicts a Haitian Vodou ritual with potent forces at work. It's constructed around a symmetrical composition featuring the Queen of the Spirits in ceremony, set in a complex fantastical landscape. Although a lesser-known Surrealist artist, Prefete Duffaut, with his masterpiece "Reine Des Esprits," stands toe to toe with the great European Surrealist painters; here, he creates a world filled with symbols and meaning built around his unique visual vocabulary. At the top center, "Reine Des Esprits" stands in a Christ-like pose, arms outstretched, with a small red cross above her head. This imagery suggests that Vodou blends traditional West African spiritual practices with French Roman Catholicism. Behind her, a carefully crafted web of concentric black lines forms a circle around which tiny, ant-like people are seen en route to their journey. The circle refers to the cosmos's divine presence.
Climbing ropes toward their spiritual destiny, tiny, ant-like people climb through her outstretched arms, which act as a conduit to her spiritual core. Her dress is composed of alternating white and red pointillist dots that evoke the cosmos. At the bottom, a four-eyed, bearded devil shoots ray-gun lines of blood from his eyes, striking the ground. Tanbou drums, adorned with death symbols and silhouetted half-moon faces, flank him. The base consists of ceremonial bottles, lit candles, and offerings evenly spaced on flat ground. Graphically, the work has the distinctive style of Duffaut, but one could make comparisons to the naive British painter L. S. Lowry "matchstick men" and other European Surrealist painters such as Miró, who also used flat shapes and bold, evocative color, depicting objects steeped in symbolism. Taken as a whole, Duffaut's "Reine Des Esprits" is a Haitian surrealist masterpiece, deeply thought out and executed with polished complexity, in which thin black lines contrast with broad areas of flat color.
Signed, and dated in the lower center. Prefete Duffaut, 82, Reine Des Esprits Provenance: Georges Nader, Collection Mark Seidenfeld, New York. Duffaut in Select Museum Collections: MoMA, NY , Milwaukee Art Museum and others