Wilson Bigaud, born in 1931 in the slums of Port-au-Prince, was brought to the Centre d'Art by Hector Hyppolite in 1946.  According to DeWiitt Peters, Bigaud was "the only one who can tell you precisely how he achieves his remarkable effects of luminous color and plastic depth."  He was entrusted at the age of 21 with what some feel became the centerpiece of the Mural Project at the Episcopal Cathedral of Sainte Trinite, "The Wedding Feast at Cana."  He later added two additional murals, "Heaven" and "Hell" to the Cathedral project.  

 

Much has been written about Bigaud having experienced a personal crisis in 1961 which led to his retirement from the Port-au-Prince art scene at the age of 30.  He continued to paint in the relative seclusion of rural Petit-Goave until his death in 2010.  

 

His work is included in the permanent collections of Musee d'Art Haitien du College Saint Pierre in Port-au-Prince, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Waterloo Museum of Art in Iowa, and the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History in Los Angeles.

 

Danticat, Edwige, and Jonathan Demme.

Island on Fire.  New York:  Kaliko Press, 1995