At Premise, Art Basel Paris 2025, The Gallery of Everything presents the life and work of legendary Afro-Caribbean painter, Hector Hyppolite (1894 - 1948).
Long considered the spiritual father of Haitian art, Hyppolite was a third-generation Vodou priest, whose graphic opus of island beliefs and rituals inspired generations of artists: from Wifredo Lam to Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Hervé Télémaque.
First identified by writer/poet Phillipe Thoby-Marcelin in 1944, Hyppolite was encouraged in his self-taught practice by Dewitt Peters at the Centre d’Art d’Haïti. When surrealist André Breton visited the island in 1946, he wrote enthusiastically about Hyppolite and acquired multiple works.
In 1947, Breton and Marcel Duchamp selected Hyppolite’s Papa Lauco as the opening page of Surrealisme en 1947 (Prière de toucher). It was an unequivocal gesture which positioned Black Surrealism at the very heart of the white European and American canon.
The Gallery of Everything presents three original works from this groundbreaking catalogue, alongside mystical still lives, all-powerful gods (or loas), and numerous figurative interpretations of Hyppolite’s muse, Erzulie.
For more information, please contact the gallery.
