World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 302 - Henri-Robert Brésil
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World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 302 – Henri-Robert Brésil
Henri-Robert Brésil started painting quite young, He was born in 1952 in Gonaïves, Haiti, and moved to Port-au-Prince in 1973. Brésil is one of those painters whose work is immediately recognizable.
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It is reminiscent of the work of the French painter Henri Rousseau. Its lush green landscapes are often populated with pink flamingos and feature flowing streams and waterfalls.
Brésil created paintings of all sizes, including extremely large ones, which were quite monumental, even breathtaking. He was very talented and impressed his colleagues with his techniques. He won the Ispan Unesco Prize in 1981.
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Tragic death
There is a lot of international interest in his work. As he got older, he became more eccentric. Tragically, he was killed in 1999 after a violent altercation in a restaurant in 1999.
His work has been exhibited in the United States, Puerto Rico, France, Italy and Switzerland and has been discussed in the New York Times and the Miami Herald.
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Meeting Cantave with Brésil
Joseph Cantave, a Haitian artist who often resides in the US, got to know the artist. He first met him in September 1997 in the market of Petionville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince.
“While I was buying fruit from a seller, a small skinny man came up to me and asked me for five dollars. The man was confident he would get the money. He gestured to another seller to wait a while to get paid. Amazed, I looked at the man from head to toe. After he paid the merchant, he came back and introduced himself very politely. “
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Connection
They immediately connected. “He was very confident in himself and always called himself Brésil. ‘I am Brésil’, he often said. We talked, talked and talked ….. We agreed we were led by the same star because we were both born under the constellation Virgo. He had visited California, Florida, New York, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, he told me. We were talking all day. He spoke French and Spanish fluently, but he constantly threw English words between sentences.”
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The following year, 1998, Cantave went to the address he had given him. “The locals told me that he no longer lived there and that he was sick and went completely mad. I was very disappointed, but a few days later I visited François Sannon the sculptor who had his studio on the main road in Kenscoff and he said me that he knew where he was. So we went to the market in Kenscof and there Brésil was sleeping on a mat at the very edge of the market. He looked different, sick and miserable. But he was so happy to see me. He considered me a lost brother. It was like I came to save his life. ”
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Special offer
“Then he decided I needed some of his work. We went to Thomassin, where he had family. They came out unto a closed shed on the dump with 10 paintings of all 24 x 36. Waterfalls, plantations and vegetables. The barn was like a bank account they kept for Brésil, his uncle told me. ”
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They offered Cantave all the paintings for $ 400.00 each, on the condition that he would buy them all. “Did you hear that? … $ 400.00 each … Even though I had the money, I automatically declined. I told them I was neither a collector nor a dealer. ”
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The great Brésil is dead
Brésil was very disappointed. When Cantave was back in Haiti a year later, in 1999, he learned that Brésil was dead. “The great Brésil is dead. I was shocked, it was as if a part of me died. It was really sad, especially regarding the circumstances of his death. He went to the large market in the center of Port-au-Prince, Marché Croix des Bossales, where he was a stranger. He went to eat something at a local vendor and was beaten to death by a crowd. This experience left me heartbroken. “
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“He offered me everything he owned and I turned him down. Maybe it could have been a reason for him to turn his life around. I’ll never know. To make up for the loss I bought and sold hundreds if not thousands of Haitian paintings by great and lesser known Haitian artists. Brésil has changed my life, for better or for worse. “
In the meantime, Brésil has become a major, internationally renowned artist and prices for his work have risen correspondingly.
Images
1) Haitian Jungle, Oil on Canvas, 2) Cascade, Oil on Canvas, 32×20 inch, 3) Haitian Jungle, Oil on Canvas, 4) Verdant Vegetation with Flamingos, Birds, Ibis & Cascade, Oil on Canvas, 20×24, 5) Landscape, Oil on Canvas, 36×24, 6) Working the Fields, Oil on Canvas, 25×24, 7) Landscape, Oil on Canvas, 20×24, 8) Jungle Landcape, Oil on Canvas, 30×40, 9) Jardin Tranquil, Oil on Canvas, 20×24, 10) Henri-Robert Brésil
https://ifthenisnow.eu/nl/personen/henri-robert-bresil
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