about the artist
1930–1996
A Port-au-Prince native, Gourgue began painting at an early age and came to the Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince in 1947. The following year his painting “The Magic Table” was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and it is still part of its permanent collection. In 1949, at the age of 18, he won the gold medal in an exhibition commemorating the bicentennial of the founding of Port au Prince.
During the 1950s and 1960s, after marrying a spanish woman, he moved to madrid and exhibited his work throughout Europe and North America. Several of his works have been auctioned at Christie’s and Sotheby’s of New York. He later divorced and returned to his hometown, where he painted most of his later work, including a large mural that decorated the flag of Haiti in the Seville Expo of 1992. He is considered one of the leading figures in modern Haitian art.
