Rigaud Benoit

Who was Rigaud Benoit?

Rigaud Benoit had become, well before his death, one of the three or four most highly prized Haitian artists.

A native of Port-au-Prince, Benoit had been a shoemaker, musician, and taxi driver before making his living as a painter. He had also supplemented his income by painting pottery, pieces he rarely signed or acknowledged.

Benoit was an early member of the Haïtian art movement known as Naive Art, so-called because of its members' limited formal training. The movement was first recognized and promoted by the Centre d'Art, founded in 1944 by the American Quaker and World War II conscientious objector Dewitt Peters.

According to a widely repeated story, Benoit was working as Peters's chauffeur in 1944 when he saw some of the first works displayed at the Centre d'Art. He immediately decided he could do as well as any of the featured artists. Late in life Benoit denied that tale, insisting that he had merely visited the Centre out of curiosity before submitting his first works to Peters. He is featured, giving that account, in Krik? Krak!, a VHS feature by Jac Avila and Vanyoska Gee.

However he got his start, his paintings rapidly became among the most highly sought of any Haitian artist. Then, n the early 1950s Benoit was one of a handful of artists asked to decorate the interior of the Cathedral of Sainte Trinité; his great mural, Nativity, stood above the high altar. The cathedral and its many masterpieces was all but totally destroyed in the January 2010 earthquake.