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Paul Claude Gardère (b. 1944, Port-au-Prince, Haiti - d. 2011, New York City, NY) was a Haitian mixed-media artist who received artistic training at The Art Student’s League of New York (1960-63) and graduated from Cooper Union (BFA Painting, 1967) and Hunter College (MFA Painting, 1972). He holds the distinction of being the first Haitian Artist-in-Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem (1989-90), was awarded a residency at Fondation Claude Monet (1993) and received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painting in 1998, among other notable achievements. During his 40+ year career, he worked and exhibited in both the United States and Haiti, maintained his primary residence in Brooklyn, NY, and became an American citizen in 1991.
Exhibiting vast technical and stylistic range, Gardère’s painting and mixed-media discipline realized diverse works and series, all of which investigate the phenomenology of racial and cultural relations (both conflict and syncretism) produced by Western imperialism and transnational migration in his native and adoptive countries. Drawing on history and symbology from Haitian, French, and US American cultures, Gardère’s work unites the national histories that informed his cultural experience and conveys the complex, often paradoxical multiplicities implicit in Afro-Caribbean diaspora identity and the post-colonial immigrant experience. His works simultaneously reflect his own inner tensions as well as the dynamics of power and cultural identity at play in global populations reckoning with histories of exploitation and forced acculturation to Eurocentric systems and values. During his lifetime, Paul Gardère received respected curatorial acclaim, particularly among academics and curators of Latin American and African diasporic art who recognized the thematic and symbolic references running through his work. Works of his reside in numerous institutional and university permanent collections. Despite institutional and curatorial acclaim, his career largely escaped recognition in the for-profit gallery economy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His sudden death in 2011 at age 66 left behind a formidable collection of un-exhibited works. He remains a well-respected, yet lesser known American artist of Haitian origin in the canons of global contemporary art. |
the estate & studio |
The estate of Paul Gardère is directed by the artist's daughter, Catherine Gardère (known to all as Cat) to protect the artist’s extensive remaining body of work and promote his artistic legacy. Operating as Paul Gardère Studio out of the artist's original studio since 1976 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, the estate employs a multi-pronged mission to preserve the artist's archive and studio space, to protect and share the artist's legacy through facilitation of exhibition and scholarship of the artist's life and art, to encourage curatorial and audience challenge of hegemonic paradigms, revisionist histories and imperialist futures, and to enhance dialogue in, about and between the Haitian and Caribbean communities and their diaspora.
Studio visits are available for curators, collectors, artists, scholars, and groups by appointment only. Modest, private events which fit with the estate's mission are also held in this historic space where several dozen works are on view. Reach out to inquire. When it comes to caring for works of art by Paul Gardère, the Studio is available for the needs of collectors. The studio cannot offer appraisals, however we are equipped to assist in conservation facilitation and supervision of the highest quality should the need arise, and to advise on art framing, installation, and shipping logistics methods if you need support. If you are seeking to authenticate a work of art believed to be by Paul Gardère, please submit a catalogue raisonné artwork submission record to start the conversation. Please contact us to discuss your needs. We appreciate your interest in the art of Paul Gardère. |
the gallery |
Paul Gardère is commercially represented by Magenta Plains in Lower Manhattan. Sales inquiries and requests for exhibition may be directed to Olivia Smith, Alja Zoe Freier, or Jonas Albro below.
Magenta Plains 149 Canal Street New York, NY, 10002 (917) 388-2464 [email protected] open Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm |
