Hector HYPPOLITE. Untitled. - Lot 120

Hector HYPPOLITE. Untitled. Ink and wash on paper, signed lower left (41.5 x 32.5 cm). Original drawing of Haitian voodoo priest Hector Hyppolite (1894-1948) from the collection of Robert Altmann. The explanation of the iconography is inscribed on the back in Altmann's hand: "According to what Elodie Barthélémy told me, this is a scene from the cult of death. Breaking the bond created by initiation (see Alfred Metraux's Haitian voodoo) between Loa and the faithful. The ceremony by which the separation between the deceased and his Loa is effected is called déssonnin. It may be performed at the cemetery. The houngan shakes his lochet. The corpse lifts its head. The houngan puts a tuft of the corpse's hair in a small white pot. - and chicken feathers. The initiates' souls pass into the "pot-head", in this case the loa would be Loa La Sirène. 15 déc 1995". Hector Hyppolite, a Haitian voodoo priest, painted in a state of religious ecstasy, firmly convinced that the brush was guided by the hand of Saint John the Baptist. He was discovered by Peters De Witt, an American English teacher and founder of the Centre d'Art de Port-au-Prince. During his visit to the Art Center in 1945, André Breton bought some of his paintings and presented them at the 1947 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme held at the Galerie Maeght in Paris. Breton would say of him that "his works were the only ones of a nature to convince us that whoever had made them had an important message to convey, that he was in possession of a secret, and the secret is everything". Robert Altmann (1915-2017) founded Brunidor Editions in Vaduz (Liechtenstein).