Estate of Paul Gardère
Paul Claude Gardère was a Haitian and American mixed-media artist who received artistic training at The Art Student’s League of New York (‘60-’63), Cooper Union (BFA ‘67) and Hunter College (MFA ‘72). He holds the distinction of being the first Haitian Artist-in-Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem (‘89-90), was awarded a residency at Fondation Claude Monet (’93) and received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painting in 1998, among other notable achievements. During his 40+ year career, he worked and exhibited in both the United States and Haiti, but maintained his primary residence in Brooklyn, NY.
Exhibiting vast technical and stylistic range, Gardère’s painting and mixed-media discipline realized diverse works and series, all of which investigate the phenomenology of racial and cultural relations (both conflict and syncretism) produced by Western imperialism and transnational migration in his native and adoptive countries. Drawing on history and symbology from Haitian, French, and US American cultures, Gardère’s work unites the national histories that informed his cultural experience and conveys the complex, often paradoxical multiplicities implicit in Afro-Caribbean diaspora identity and the post-colonial immigrant experience. His works simultaneously reflect his own inner tensions as well as the dynamics of power and cultural identity at play in global populations reckoning with histories of exploitation and forced acculturation to Eurocentric systems and values.
Recent years have seen increased attention to Paul Gardère, with exhibitions such as Paul Gardère: Second Nature, Magenta Plains, New York, NY (2025); Paul Gardère: Vantage Points, The Cooper Union Stuyvesant Fish House, New York, NY (2024-25); inclusion in Surrealism and US: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists Since 1940, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX (2024); Repossession: Didier William and Paul Gardère, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ (2024); and Paul Gardère & Didier William, Soft Network, New York, NY (2022). Gardère’s work is included in public collections such as the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; the St. Louis Art Museum, MO; the New Orleans Museum of Art, LA; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; the Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN; the Milwaukee Art Museum, WI; and many others.
Despite institutional and curatorial acclaim, his career largely escaped recognition in the for-profit gallery economy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His sudden death in 2011 at age 66 left behind a formidable estate of un-exhibited works. He remains a well-respected, but lesser known American artist of Caribbean descent in the canons of global contemporary art. The estate of Paul Gardère is directed by the artist's daughter, Catherine to protect the artist’s extensive remaining body of work and promote his artistic legacy. Operating as Paul Gardère Studio out of the artist's original studio in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, the estate employs a mission to preserve the artist's archive and studio space, to protect and share the artist's legacy through facilitation of exhibition and scholarship of the artist's life and art, to encourage curatorial and audience challenge of hegemonic paradigms, revisionist histories and imperialist futures, and to enhance dialogue in, about and between the Haitian and Caribbean communities and their diaspora.
Born in 1944, Port-au-Prince, HT
Died in 2011, New York, NY
Education
1972
MFA, Hunter College, New York, NY
1967
BFA, Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture, New York, NY
1960-1963
Art Students League, New York, NY
Solo and Two Person Exhibitions
2026
Paul Gardère at EXPO Chicago, IL (forthcoming)
2025
Second Nature, Magenta Plains, New York, NY
2024
Paul Gardère: Vantage Points, Stuyvesant Fish House, Cooper Union, New York, NY (October 2024 - June 2025)
Repossession: Didier William and Paul Gardère, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, New Brunswick, NJ
2022
Paul Gardère x Didier William, Soft Network, New York, NY
Soft Network Presents: Paul Gardère, Independent 20th Century Art Fair, New York, NY
2017
Paul Gardère: Goudou Goudou, Skoto Gallery, New York, NY
2008
Paul Gardère: Multiple Narratives II, Skoto Gallery, New York, NY
2007
Visual Semantics of Diaspora: Multiple Narratives, Lehigh University, Zoellner Main Gallery, Bethlehem, PA
2003
Upon a Time, Book Installation, 5 + 5 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2001
Paul Gardère: Multiple Narratives, Olin Art Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, OH
1999
Paul Gardère: Recent Works, 1995-1998, Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ
1997
The Work of Haitian Artist Paul Claude Gardère, Le Centre d’Art, Port-au-Prince, HT
1996
Giverny Revisited, Perspective Fine Arts Inc., New York, NY
1995
Gardens on Paper, Wendy S. Hoff, New York, NY
1994
An Inner Passage: The Garden as Inner Reality, Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
1992
New Works by: Paul Gardère, Miller Gallery, Jamaica Arts Center, Queens, NY
1987
Paul Claude Gardère, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo, NY
1985
Voici Haiti: Paul Claude Gardère, Davenport Museum of Art (Figge Art Museum), Davenport, IA
1984
Paintings and Drawings by Paul Claude Gardère, Paul Waggoner Gallery, Chicago, IL
1983
Paul Claude Gardère et Edouard Duval-Carrié, Musee d’Art Haitien du Collège St. Pierre, Port-au-Prince, HT
1982
Paul Claude Gardère, Galerie Marassa, Petion-Ville, HT
1981
Paul Claude Gardère, Galerie Marassa, Petion-Ville, HT
1980
Announcing: Paul Claude Gardère, Le Centre d’Art, Port-au-Prince, HT
Group Exhibitions
2025
Magenta Plains at Art Basel Miami Beach, FL
From The Studio: Fifty-Eight Years of Artists in Residence, Studio Museum, New York, NY
Art of the Americas, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Collection show, Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA
2024
100: A Century of Collections, Community, and Creativity, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY
Surrealism and US: Caribbean and African Diasporic Art Since 1940, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX
Charismatic Goods, CANADA Gallery, New York, NY
2023
Anything can pass before the eyes of a person, Derosia Gallery, New York, NY
2020
Young Artists: One, Fridman Gallery, New York, NY
2019
Diaspora Expressions, Haitian Embassy to the United State of America, Washington D.C.
The Barn Show, Johannes Vogt Gallery, East Hampton, NY
2014
Black and Gray, Skoto Gallery, New York, NY
2011
Haitian Art Excerpts: From Renaissance to Diaspora, Kresge Gallery, Berrie Center, Ramapo College, Mahwah, NJ
2009
Courants Chauds, Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien, Port-au-Prince, HT
2005
Works on Paper, The 17th Annual Armory Show, Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, NY
2004
Works on Paper, The 16th Annual Armory Show, Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, NY
The Collector’s Show, Works on Paper, Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
Silicon Gallery Fine Art Prints, Gallery Artists, Philadelphia, PA
Small Works International, The Blue Mountain Gallery, New York, NY
2003
Upon a Time, Book Installation, Miami Art Fair, Raphael Fodde Editions
Letterpress Showcase, Center for Book Arts, New York, NY
2001
Highlights from the Collection, Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ
Nexus II: Transformation/Transfiguration, Skoto Gallery, New York, NY
Marks of the Soul, Ritter Art Gallery, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL
2000
Offspring: Artists Celebrate the Child, Brooklyn Heights Montessori School, Brooklyn, NY
1999
Family, Fission, and Fusion: Hispaniola, Imarisha Art House, Brooklyn, NY
1998
Kongo Criollo, Taller Boricua Gallery, New York, NY
A Brooklyn Salon, Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Three Caribbean Artists, James Howe Fine Arts Gallery, Kean College, Union, NJ
1995
Alternatives: 20 Years of Hallwalls, Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo State College, Buffalo, NY
1993
Kwanzaa: Creativity, The Kuumba Principle, Gallery II Aljira Contemporary Arts Center, Newark, NJ
Recent Acquisitions: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Exhibition, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
The Aljira Fine Art Auction, Gateway Center, Newark, NJ
1991
Sculptural Art: Raúl Acero and Paul Gardère, Wendell Street Gallery, Cambridge, MA
Double Take, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellows, Elsa Mott Ives Gallery, New York, NY
From the Studio: Artists-in-Residence, 1989-90, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
1990
Food: From Pleasure to Politics, Goddard-Riverside Community Center, New York, NY
Selections, Artists Space & Aljira Contemporary Arts Center, New York, NY
Images from the Common Ground, Art in General, New York, NY
1989
Nexus, P.S. 122 Gallery, New York, NY
Déjà vu: Haitian Influence in Contemporary American Art, Jamaica Arts Center, Jamaica, NY
1988
Survival, Littman Gallery, Portland State University, Portland, OR
Current Investigations, Triplex Theatre Gallery, Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, NY
Art from the African Diaspora: Continuance, Aljira Contemporary Arts Center, Newark, NJ
1987
With and Without Acclaim: International Black and Hispanic Artists, Aljira Contemporary Arts Center, Newark, NJ
Images of Latin American Culture: Art and Artifacts, Gray Art Gallery, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC
1986
Caribbean Art / African Currents, Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, New York, NY
1985
Trends, Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, New York, NY
Twenty First Annual Art Show: Caribbean Art: African Currents, Goddard-Riverside Community Center, New York, NY
1983
Under the Spell, Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, Chicago, IL
Haiti: An Exhibit of Recent Haitian Works of Art, Bank of Boston Headquarters, Boston, MA
1981
Esposicion Casa Francia, Santo Domingo, DR
1976
Brooklyn 1976, Community Gallery at The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Inaugural Show, Towers Gallery, New York, NY
Inaugural Show, Deitcher-O’Reilly Gallery, New York, NY
Traveling Exhibitions
2012-2016
Restoring the Spirit: Celebrating Haitian Art, Curator: Rima Girinius
Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA
Vero Beach Museum of Art, Vero Beach, FL
Pomona College Art Museum, Claremont, CA
1999-2000
18th Annual Metro Show, Curators: Carl Hazlewood, Alejandro Anreus, and Judy Wukitc
City Without Walls, Newark, NJ
Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ
Monmouth County Library System, Manalapan, NJ
B. Beamsderfer Gallery, Highland Park, NJ
Johnson Free Public Library, Hackensack, NJ
Palmer Museum, Springfield, NJ
1995-1997
Masterworks in Haitian Art from The Davenport Museum of Art
Davenport Museum of Art (Figge Art Museum), Davenport, IA
Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH
Philharmonic Center for the Arts, Naples, FL
Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma City, OK
California State University, Los Angeles, CA
Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, AZ
The Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, FL
Archer M. Huntington Gallery, University of Texas, Austin, TX
1984
Through Haitian Eyes: a benefit exhibition for the Museum of Haitian Art in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Bacardi Gallery, Miami, FL
Meridian House International, Washington, DC
Awards, Fellowships, and Residencies
1998
Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Painting
1993-1994
Artist-in-Residence, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY
1993
Foundation Monet, Giverny, France, Artist-in-Residence
1991
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, New York, NY
1991-1992
New York State Council on the Arts Award, Jamaica Arts Center, Queens, NY
1989-1990
Artist-in-Residence, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
1966
Yale Norfolk School of Art, New Haven, CT, Artist-in-Residence
Public Collections
Brooklyn Museum, Library Special Editions, Brooklyn, NY
Eglise de St. Nicolas, Kenscoff, HT
Eglise St. Trinité, Port-au-Prince, HT
Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Kenyon College Collection, Gambier, OH
Le Centre d’Art, Port-au-Prince, HT
Brooks Museum, Memphis, TN
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Musee d’Art Haitien du College St. Pierre, Port-au-Prince, HT
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA
Newark Museum of Art, Library Archives, Newark, NJ
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Special Collections Library, Washington, DC
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC
St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
The Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA
The Museum of Modern Art, Library, New York, NY
The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY
Yale University Beinecke Library, New Haven, CT
Zimmerli Art Museum: The Jersey City Museum of Art Collection, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
