Sacha Thébaud

Sacha Thébaud (artist name Tebó) Painter and Sculptor, Architect-Engineer, Furniture Designer, Urban Planner, Environmental Reformer

Born: January 22, 1934 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Died: May 26, 2004 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic (pancreatic cancer.)

Tebó is an artist who comes from Haiti, Montreal, Paris, Miami-FL, St. Croix- United States Virgin Islands, and the Dominican Republic.[1][2][3] [4] [5][6][7]

Tebó's abstract, symbolic, and figurative styles throughout his career bridged Pre-Columbian, Latin American, Afro-Caribbean, Post Modern American, and Contemporary European cultural influences. NYU's Chair of the Department of Art History and Latin American Art Scholar, Edward J. Sullivan, describes his work as "Hermetic Symbolism."[8]

Although a U.S. citizen, Tebó is a blend of "new world" Haitian Creole and Surinam-Dutch along with European ancestry from Holland,Germany, Poland, France, and Spain. He is best considered a Contemporary Caribbean artist, since he lived and traveled throughout the Caribbean.

The Basis of the category, "Caribbean Artist" is a suggestion that Sacha Tebó be considered not only as an artist from Haiti, but as a Caribbean artist. His art was embraced throughout the Caribbean. Though he was born in Haiti, one must not make the mistake of identifying Tebó's work with naïf Haitian art or voodoo. Raised Judeo-Catholic, he was monotheistic and spiritually inclined, but did not participate in organized religious rituals. Tebó began using encaustics at age five, when a visiting uncle brought him a box of wax crayons. In his teens he began painting with encaustics (metallic oxide powders mixed with softened beeswax.) He subsequently painted while attending the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and working in the architectural atelier of Bernar Zehrfuss and Marcel Breuer. Tebó worked with them on L'Arche de la Defence. Here he met Le Corbusier, who offered him a position to work on what was to become the first planned city in India, named Chandigarh. Tebó turned it down, and instead married Rona Roy in Dothan, Alabama and returned to Haiti to start an architectural practice, which started with the construction of the tower for his family's Castel Haiti Hotel.

In his spare time, he painted in his self-styled contemporary technique at Issa El Saieh's home, alongside naïf and contemporary artists. Tebó developed a friendship with artist St. Pierre Toussaint of Kenscoff, whose art he collected. He helped pave the way for younger contemporary Caribbean artists as they began to form an identity, and taught his assistants Harry Jacques (Arijac) and eventually Osnel St. Ral the encaustic technique.

The 1963 disappearance and subsequent death of his father-in-law at the hands of a Ton Ton Macoute (henchman of then President,François Duvalier), prompted him to leave Haiti for Miami and Christiansted,St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was able to concentrate on his art, and in the early 1960s Tebó's paintings toured Europe with American Artists, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Larry Rivers.

In the early 1970s Tebó moved back to Haiti under improved political conditions, only to leave in 1987, when Haiti was again in turmoil. His move to Santiago de los Caballeros, in the Dominican Republic became his last.

The artist's work has been exhibited throughout museums and galleries in North America, Central & South America, Europe, and most frequently throughout the Caribbean islands, where he could "island hop" with small canvasses inserted into larger ones for ease of transit. He did not consider himself part of any "school" although he had a philosophy similar to Carl Jung's "Synchronicity", which he thought transcended both time and place. Although contemporary with periods of figurative and abstract, he was influenced by the culture and history of the region.

Cuba, the island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic (Quisqueya), the Caribbean, and American Virgin Islands were inhabited by the Arawak / Tainos, and Carib indigenous people. These islands had a history and soul before Christopher Columbus arrived to establish the first "new world" colonies, even before African slaves came to America. As a stopping point to Brazil, Mexico, and coasts of South America and the United States, these islands were subject to numerous European conflicts and conquests. It is amazing how such populations of diverse melting pots of rich cultural heritage as well as "time warps" have been able to thrive, tolerate, and even love each other so successfully in recent years. It is this diversity that binds them together collectively, and it is this ideal unity that Tebó wished to depict throughout his painting and sculpture. Only in the last century has the Caribbean region become more widely recognized and valued for its music and art (500 years since Columbus' discovery!)

Tebó received the Best Foreign Artist award from the Dominican Art Critic's Association on behalf of UNESCO. Part of his philosophy was not to participate in juried art competitions, but to encourage and compliment fellow artists. He, along with Marie José Nadal of Paris and Haiti, and Marianne de Tolentino and Danilo de Lo Santos of the Dominican Republic, received a collaborative grant from the Getty Foundation to research and write a book on the combined art of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The survivors of this project anticipate the printing of the book in the near future.

Concerned for his fellow humanity and planet, Tebó was active in reforesting Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In the '70's, soon after the Haitian government disapproved a hillside community in Turgeau that Tebó had intended to develop, he wrote an article in the Nouvelliste entitled "Haiti en L'An 2000" where he stressed the importance of infrastructure reform and environmental sensitivity amid population growth. He also held 'koumbits,' where he motivated communities to plant trees, and held environmental-oriented intallations making stoves using discarded tires, fueling them with fallen twigs instead of chopping down trees for firewood.

Specific Art Medium: Encaustic (paint made of melted beeswax and metallic oxide powders.)

Subjects: Symbols and figures of Women, Horses, Kites, Boats, Turtles, Birds, Pelicans, Fish, Mermaids, Drums and Musical Instruments, Houses, Tropical Trees, the Sea, and Mardi Gras figures, rhythm, and colors.

Sculpture: copper, bronze, stainless steel, wood, and also acrylic color painted over metal. He presented symbolic and environment-oriented sculpture as museum installations.

Furniture: He developed and patented furniture designs focusing on chairs.

Tebó was fluent in at least six languages spoken in the Caribbean and Brazil: French, English, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Portuguese.

References

  1. ↑ Thebaud, Sacha. "Biography". art and biography. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  2. ↑ Thebaud, Sacha. accessdate=December 6, 2012 "Patents".
  3. ↑ Thebaud, Sacha (1995). Pour Que Vive La Ligne. Edition Henri Deschamps, Collection Marassa.
  4. ↑ http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2004-06-07/news/0406070135_1_dominican-republic-figurative-art-female-form
  5. ↑ http://lenouvelliste.com/lenouvelliste/article/62726/Haiti-au-toit-de-la-Grande-Arche.html
  6. ↑ http://hoy.com.do/homenaje-a-sacha-tebo/
  7. ↑ http://lenouvelliste.com/lenouvelliste/article/78961/Une-culture-en-regression.html
  8. ↑ http://arthistory.as.nyu.edu/object/EdwardSullivan.html