When Christopher Columbus landed on the island Hispaniola, Arawak Indians and Taïnos' Art was already reigning through the symbols of their religious faiths, moreover claimed to be at the origin of vévés; drawn elements on the ground during the voodoos worship.
However, the Haitian painting takes its real flight after the Independence in 1804, especially by the creation of the Royal Academy of Painting at the Cap Haïtien by the King Henri Christophe, where the English painter Richard Evans was invited to teach. From then on, a multitude of academies and schools of art, as the School of Port-au- Prince in 1816 created by the President Pétion, or the Academy of Painting and Sculpture by the Haitian artist Lochard in 1880. Voodoo and history as subjects prevailed in the Haitian painting, in particular under the Emperor Soulouque between 1830 and 1860.
However, the 19th century remains influenced by the European style, imported by the rich white families and conveyed by the uncountable copyists until the 1930s and especially the 1940s to perceive the beginnings of a Haitian artistic identity as itself.
The arrival of the American watercolorist Dewitt Peters in Haiti marks an important artistic bend. By opening the Center of Art of Port-au-Prince in 1944, he teaches the modern art as well to the intellectual elite as to the self-taughts, to whom he offers the opportunity to express their creativity. And so Haitian Art, so-called “Naïve Art”, is born: flat and lively colors, popular subjects, prosperous landscapes, religion and scenes of life, whose main actors are Saint Brice and Hector Hyppolite, both priests voodoo, André Pierre or Philomé Obin to name a few.
