Hervé Télémaque

Born in 1937 in Port-au-Prince (Haiti) and died in 2022, Hervé Télémaque was a French artist associated with surrealism and narrative figuration in the 1960s. In 1957, he moved from Haiti to New York, then dominated by Abstract Expressionism. He finally settled in Paris in 1961, co-founding the narrative figuration movement in reaction to the prevailing abstract tendencies. So, while his early paintings were resolutely abstract, his later work blends everyday objects and colored forms in complex, sensitive and sometimes caustic compositions. Indeed, his work is also imbued with strong political, anti-colonial and anti-racist commitments inherited from Haitian history and its confrontation with American racial segregation. In 2006, Hervé Télémaque was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, and his work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions around the world, including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2015, the Serpentine Gallery in London in 2021 and the Aspen Art Museum in 2023.