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Hector Hyppolite

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Peters De Witt, Hector Hyppolite, Wifredo Lam, Philippe Thoby-Marcelin

Description

Manuscript signed by André Breton, dating from 1947.

"A pure gift of happy things": discovered in Haiti in 1945, Hector Hyppolite's painting delighted Breton, who was sensitive both to the naive play of colours and to the mystery, to the pervasive esotericism of this Voodoo painter who immediately seemed to him to be "in possession of a secret". A naïve painter, who gave Haitian culture an expression commensurate with its originality, Hyppolite seemed to Breton to be a spirit both very distant, of an almost pure exoticism, and at the same time very close to his own intimate concerns and resonances. 

Signed autograph manuscript (1954)

4 pages in-8° folio, dated, titled, autograph manuscript signed by André Breton, relating to the work of the Haitian painter Hector Hyppolite, whose paintings Breton saw for the first time in Port-au-Prince, in December 1945.

"This work and others by the same artist I was able to have shown to me that same day by far eclipsed all the other paintings on display. They were marked with the stamp of total authenticity and were the only ones to convince me that the person who executed them had an important message to communicate, that he was in possession of a secret...".

Bibliography

André Breton (Édition publiée sous la direction d'Étienne-Alain Hubert avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier et Marie-Claire Dumas), « Hector Hyppolite », Le Surréalisme et la peinture, Œuvres complètes, tome IV, Écrits sur l'art et autres textes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 720-725.