Death of Hector Hyppolite, oungan and grand master of Haitian painting

Hector Hyppolite was born at Saint-Marc on 16 September 1894, a third-generation oungan who made shoes and painted houses. Before he owned a brush he painted on cardboard with chicken feathers and sold the pictures to American Marines. DeWitt Peters and the Centre d’Art found him in 1945; Philippe Thoby-Marcelin brought him to Port-au-Prince in 1946. In three years he painted more than two hundred canvases. Andre Breton and Wifredo Lam bought his work in December 1945 and carried his name to Europe. He died on 9 June 1948, poor, three years into the career that made him the grand master of Haitian art.