The Haitian Paintings Story

1971

A True Story

How I got involved in selling Haitian Art

Written 3/2011, and rewritten 11/2019* 702 Words*

By Howard Yasgar

It was 1963 and I had just joined an automotive parts rebuilding company in Miami.

Because of the company’s location in South Florida, we had customers coming in from South and Central America as well as from all the Caribbean islands including Haiti.

It was in 1967, when I received an interesting overseas call from my good friend Lou Gladstein.

Lou had purchased the remnants of the Haitian railroad and he requested that I fly over there right away to assist him, and that’s when I started flying back and forth to Haiti.

If I was going to often be in Haiti, it gave me the opportunity to stop in and call on some of our Haitian automotive parts customers in my free time.

Removing the Haitian railroad became a very time-consuming project, but whenever I had some free time and I could find any of our customers, I would stop by and say hello.

It was in early 1971 when I was in Haiti walking down the main street in in the capital city of Port Au Prince.

I looked down the street and I saw a nice looking freshly painted two story concrete building which was very unusual for Haiti.

Then I recognized the name on the building, it was one of our automotive parts customers.

The building had two large roll-up doors, that were open to the sidewalk so customers could walk

inside.

As I looked closer, I could see a long parts sales counter.

I crossed the street and I walked in the first large roll- up doorway.

The first thing I noticed, there were about 8 rows of colorful Haitian paintings all leaning against the parts counter.

I recognized them right away; they were primitive art paintings I always saw them in the Haiti tourist stores.

There were at least 10 to 15 different size paintings in each of the rows, some of the paintings were 3-foot x 3-foot, and some were larger and some smaller.

There were so many paintings in each row that there wasn’t room left for me to walk up to the counter.

As I stood there, I looked up to the building’s second floor, where there appeared to be an office.

There was a big glass window and I immediately recognized the owner Alex, standing there looking down at me.

As soon as Alex recognized me, he smiled and came downstairs, and we shook hands.

The first thing I said was, Alex, what the hell are you doing with all the native paintings?

He said, “That’s a long story”, I said tell me the story.

Alex said, “As you know, here in Haiti we have a lot of iterant artists”.

Every Monday they do a painting, then they spend the rest of the week trying to sell it to the tourists.

If it doesn’t sell by Friday they come here and I will give them $2.00 for the painting.

They take the money, buy some food and a bottle of our homemade rum, and they get drunk.

When they wake up on Monday morning, they make another painting.

I couldn’t believe the story, I thought most of the paintings were colorful and beautiful.

So, I said, Alex, I bet I can sell these paintings in Miami, I’m sure that we can make a business out of it.

I took out my wallet and gave Alex a $100.00 bill.

I said Alex, send some paintings to Miami on Air Haiti, send them all freight collect, I will pay.

The following week Air Haiti called me.

Alex had sent about 50 paintings and he also sent hand carved Haitian picture frames.

I called him on the phone and he said the hand carved frames only cost him $2.00 each, so he sent them to me.

I spent the next two weeks just framing pictures.

Everywhere you walked in our building there were Haitian paintings.

Then I sat down and called every art dealer in the Miami phone book. But as soon as they heard “Haiti” they laughed at me.

Not even one art store wanted to see them.

All the art people said I was crazy to think I could sell a Haitian painting in Miami.

After several months of trying, I did sell a few, but I started giving most of them away.

It was many years later, in 1990 when I was in Key West and I visited a newly opened Haitian Art gallery.

There was a large primitive art painting hanging on the wall, I recognized both the painting and the artist’s name. I had either given away or thrown away all his paintings that I had.

I had to ask the salesman how much the painting cost. He said it was only $3500.00, and would I like to buy it?