The younger brother of the painter Edgar Brierre, Murat was born in Mirebalais and went to school in Port-au-Prince.  From an early age he supported himself as a tilesetter, mason, cabinet-maker and blacksmith, painting in his free time.

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In 1956 Rigaud Benoit introduced him to Dewitt Peters.  At the Centre d'Art the artist gave up painting to work with metal which vodun associates with special powers.  Murat also preferred metal as a less deceptive medium than painting.  He compared its strength and endurance to that of the Haitian people.

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Like Georges Liautaud he cut and forged flat shapes from oil drums.  However, his original images based on drawings and derived from Vodun and Christian themes as well as modern life are more complex and varied in design, and his late work is larger in scale.  Said to be the first of the metal sculptors to link figures in narrative works, Murat Brierre has exhibited widely and is considered one of the major Haitian sculptors.

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His work is included in the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Figge Art Museum, the Waterloo Center for the Arts, and many other art museums around the world.

 

Stebich, Ute.  A Haitian Celebration: Art and Culture.  Milwaukee:  The Milwaukee Art Museum, 1992