Born in 1954 in the village of Coteau, near Cayes in the
far south of Haiti. His mother was a farmer and his father a cabinet-maker. Buteau
remained in school until the age of 20, when he joined his father in the
cabinet-making business. He began to paint at about this time, encouraged by a
cousin who was a painter. He also worked as a fisherman and in a factory in
Port-au-Prince until it was shut down during the embargo of the early 1990's.
This circumstance led to his focusing on painting anew, with the encouragement
of Galerie Bourbon-Lally, among others. A rising star of Haiti's current
generation of artists, Gelin Buteau passed away in July of 2000. We will miss
his brilliant, fantastic and often disturbing vision. Buteau’s work has been
exhibited internationally including the exhibition "Error and Eros: Love
Sacred and Profane" at the American Visionary Art Museum in 1998, and is
published in Artistes en Haiti: Cent Parmi d'Autres (1997) and Haiti: Anges et
Demons (2000), among other books.
