On the southern coast of Haiti, the lovely seacoast city of Jacmel has inspired artists who belong to the “School of Beauty”. These artists combine skilled and delicate painting with a reverential love of the beauty of nature.
They create a dream of perfection in their fantasy landscapes and romantic scenes. The steep mountains reflections and bays of that coastal town influenced this exceptional artists.
Préfète Duffaut, the founder of Jacmel School, was born in Jacmel on January 1, 1923. He began to draw on his own after the opening of the Centre d´Art in Port-au-Prince in 1944 when Rigaud Benoit visited Jacmel as a talent scout for the Art Center.
He is world renowned for his mountainous landscapes with serpentine roads and his crowded street scenes. An essentially naive painter, he started out doing highly precise paintings of Jacmel, then shifted toward a style allowing his unbridled imagination to tinker with the laws of gravity.
