She had great respect for women painters who, she said, were able to manage the time to create while having to support a whole household. Women painters, said Michèle Manuel, have much more merit in this sense because they have to work hard to paint while taking on their responsibilities in the family. This is why she always worked to dispel the misconceptions about Haitian women painters.
The woman who has always been nicknamed “Painter of Light” was an exceptional mother to her children. “Her family came first, and she managed to maintain this difficult balance between her family life and her professional life by defying all the taboos of the time that placed women solely in the home,” says Habib Jiha, head of Expressions Art Gallery, which represented the painter’s works for around fifteen years.
Born in 1935 in Port-au-Prince, Michèle Manuel has been painting since childhood. She began her apprenticeship at the Art Center where she was a student of the American Lois Jones Pierre Noël, and then continued her studies in Puerto Rico, at the studio of the painter Cervoni, and later at the University of Rochester in New York, United States of America. Her career really took off in 1960.
Michèle Manuel possessed immense talent and left behind a colossal body of work that has been acclaimed everywhere. In fact, the Rennes Museum in France recently added a work by the artist to its permanent collection. Habib Jiha describes her work in these terms: “Michèle Manuel’s work is essentially figurative; her treatment of surfaces can sometimes verge on abstraction. The relationship between colors can be dominant. The vigor of her touch, in places, reveals brushstrokes. Michèle managed to create unity and variety in her works through the contrasts and harmonies of forms. While the initial inspiration comes from a landscape, the final product is undeniably an abstract composition bordering on Cubism.” “For Michèle Manuel, life is movement, crowds, and displacement. She organizes her space by playing with perspective. Her work radiates warmth with its strong, sunny, and vivid colors. That’s why she’s called the ‘Painter of Light,'” he adds.
Michèle Manuel was influenced by several artists: the Fauvists, the Braques, Picasso… “If Michèle Manuel’s painting evokes spontaneity, the development of her constructions, particularly in her city landscapes, proves that each of her works is the fruit of long reflection. A perfectionist, Michèle was rarely completely satisfied with her paintings and considered each of her works as the product of her entrails,” concludes Habib Jiha in tribute to the artist who left us on October 14, 2022.
“As soon as the situation allows, we hope to be able to pay tribute to Michèle and celebrate the life of this great lady of Haitian painting as she deserves,” promises the head of Expressions Galerie d’art, who believes that Haitian culture has taken a major hit with Michèle’s passing. “She is part of our national heritage,” he concludes.
