Portrait of Gerard Fortune © Maggie Steber
Gérard Fortuné was born in 1924 in Montagne-Noire, in the heights of Pétionville. Coming from a modest family, he embarked on self-taught painting in the early 1980s.
During his visits to the Gallery of Issa El Saieh, he fell in love and was inspired by the works of artists like André Pierre, André Normil, the "Saint-Soleil" community or Hector Hyppolite. Quickly, he met personalities from the world of visual arts who would be mentors for him: Michel Monnin, Nader, Judith Chambers among others.
An important figure in Haitian naive art, Gérard Fortuné's oil on canvas series help establish the myth of voodoo as the instigator of the Liberation of Haiti. His works have been exhibited internationally, and are included in the permanent collections of the Waterloo Center for the Arts in Iowa, the Huntington Museum of Art in Virginia, Ramapo College in New Jersey, as well as the Museum Collection. Art Patricia & Philip Frost of the International University of Florida and that of the Museum of Aquitaine
