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Port-au-Prince in 1944 as an independent institution that sought to provide only basic support for some artists and formal instruction for others. Some of the artists who are now legend in Haitian art soon joined the Centre d'Art: Philome Obin, Rigaud Benoit (1944); Castera Bazile and Hector Hyppolite (1945).31

It was the mystic, the Vodun priest, Hector Hyppolite who, for a brief period of less than three years, produced works that have been universally recognized as some of the finest examples of popular art. Here Vodun, an African retention in the New World, served to inspire and expand the artist's imagination. Hyppolite's work has the characteristic directness that is often seen in folk art. His vision is not changed by concerns for scientific perspective nor for faithful portrayal of visual appearances. Innocence and seriousness of purpose are equally revealed in works such as Voodoo Personage, (ca. 1946). Although Hyppolite died of a heart attack in 1948, his work had literally burst upon the stage of international art, with exhibitions organized by French surrealist artist André Breton and shown the year before in Paris, Berlin, and Basel. His paintings are visions of the world seen through the lens of Vodun.

Wilson Bigaud is also recognized as one of the most important popular painters of what was dubbed a national school of Haitian art. Noted for detailed and precise rendering of vegetation, Bigaud created canvases that are magical and are singularly captivating. Earthly Paradise and Murder in the Jungle are representative examples of Bigaud's oeuvre.32

Intra-Diasporic Affinities

Artists who are untrained and from different national cultural traditions offer an interesting comparison when their works are examined in light of our effort to discuss artistic continuities within the African Diaspora. Haitian artist Georges Liautaud and Yoruba artist Asiru Olatunde are two such examples. Much like the Centre d'Art's treatment of its popular artists, Ulli Beire and Suzanne Wenger33 encouraged Olatunde to pursue jewelry and small sculpture, without imposing on him their aesthetic beliefs. Works such as Pigs Cavorting Around a Tree, a metal relief, show morphological similarities to Georges Liautaud's Devil-Man-Woman, a metal sculpture created from abandoned steel drums. Both works exhibit a type of folk surrealism seen in traditional African sculpture. These artists, not unlike the European Surrealists of the 1920s, were fascinated by the logic of the incongruous and the commonality of the fantastic. The tradition of creativity in Haiti shows its richness and diversity at every turn, and by its character confirms the resiliency of African art and culture.

Artists who are participating in the international mainstream of art of their time necessarily pose a specific type of problem for our investigation of African retentions in art since the 1930s. One such artist is Wifredo Lam, an Afro-Cuban, who discovered his roots by going to Paris and joining the Surrealists in the late 1930s. While there he began to develop his mature style. Lam, at this point in his career, to borrow the words of Edward K. Braithwaite, was "consciously reaching out to rebridge the gap with the spiritual heartland,"34 creating works that are connected intrinsically to the African tradition.

Lam reached out to his heritage by attempting to draw upon his subconscious, and in doing so tapped the wellspring of primordial memories of Cuban Santería of his youth. In works such as The Jungle (1943), Lam, as Lowery Sims maintains, "present(s) the ... multiplicities of reality that combine the empirical and surreal worlds in an African cosmological system."35 Cubism was built on rendering on a two dimensional plane, the illusion of African sculptured forms with their cylindricality and frontal orientation. Lam's work is a multilayered Africanized conclusion to some of the pictorial concerns revealed in the early developments of Analytical Cubism.

Lam's work in many ways can be seen as a metaphor for the Caribbean cultural expression itself. He has responded to his African heritage by intuitively and rationally grasping the visual essence of his memories of Santería. His art is within the syntax of European Surrealism, but the basis of