Préfète Duffaut
1923-2012 (JACMEL, HAITI)
BORN TO A FAMILY OF SHIPBUILDERS, PRÉFÈTE DUFFAUT. WAS PERHAPS THE MOST TRANSCENDENT OF THE FIRST WAVE OF HAITIAN ART MAKERS. IT WAS A RELIGIOUS VISION WHICH INSTRUCTED HIM TO DEDICATE HIS LIFE TO THE DECORATION OF HOUSES OF WORSHIP. YET HIS MURALS WERE ATYPICAL FOR THE REGION AND BROUGHT HIM TO THE ATTENTION OF LE CENTRE D’ART. HERE, AMONGST OTHER ARTISTS, HE CONTINUED TO EXPLORE SPIRITUAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS AND BECAME KNOWN FOR HIS PENCIL-THIN FIGURES, IMAGINARY CONSTRUCTIONS AND OFF-CENTRE SYMMETRIES.
ALTHOUGH BEST KNOWN FOR HIS FLOATING LANDSCAPES AND DREAM-STATE DEPICTIONS OF HIS HOMETOWN OF JACMEL, IT IS DUFFAUT’S OFF-KILTER EARLY MATERIAL WHICH REALLY SHOWS HIS LATERAL ABILITIES TO THEIR FULLEST.
Outliers and American Vanguard Art, National Gallery of Art (Washington DC) 2018
Sam Doyle: The Mind’s Eye - Works from the Gordon W. Bailey Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles) 2014
Soul Stirring - African American Self-Taught Artists from the South, California African American Museum (Los Angeles) 2013
Great and Mighty Things: Outsider Art from the Sheldon and Jill Bonovitz Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia) 2013
Exhibition #1, The Museum of Everything, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli (Turin) 2010
Coming Home: Self-Taught Artists, The Bible, and the American South Art Museum of the University of Memphis (Memphis) 2004
Sam Doyle: Heart and Soul - Paintings and Artist’s Materials from the Collection of Gordon W. Bailey, New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans) 2000
Local Heroes: Paintings and Sculpture by Sam Doyle, High Museum of Art (Atlanta) 2000
Passionate Visions of the American South Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present, New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans) 1993
Baking in the Sun: Visionary Images from the South - Selections from the Collection of Sylvia and Warren Lowe, University of Southeastern Louisiana Art Museum (Hammond) 1987
Black Folk Art in America 1930-1980, Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC) 1982
Gordon W. Bailey, “Sam Doyle,” The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture - Vol. 23, University of North Carolina Press, 2013
Everything #1, The Museum of Everything, exhibition catalogue, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin/Milan, 2010
Gordon W. Bailey, “Sam Doyle: Haints and Saints,” Raw Vision, #61, 2007
Art Museum of the University of Memphis, exhibition catalogue, Coming Home: Self-Taught Artists, The Bible, and the American South, University Press of Memphis, 2004
High Museum of Art, exhibition catalogue, Local Heroes: Paintings and Sculpture by Sam Doyle, High Museum of Art, 2000
William Arnett, “Sam Doyle,” Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art of the South, Vol. 1, Tinwood Books, 2000
Corcoran Gallery of Art, exhibition catalog, Black Folk Art in America 1930-1980, University Press of Mississippi and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, 1982
