Jean Girigori Exhibition in Chavón

The Altos de Chavón Cultural Foundation Center is hosting a new solo exhibition of painter Jean Girigori, whose work is considered by experts to be among of the most powerful expressions in modern painting in the Caribbean and expression of visual thought in the Antilles region.

The well-known Caribbean painter has shown her work internationally at the world’s best museums, cultural centers,…

The well-known Caribbean painter has shown her work internationally at the world’s best museums, cultural centers, galleries, art fairs in her native Curazao as well as all around the Caribbean including the Museum of Modern Art in the Dominican Republic and the Altos de Chavón Cultural Center where she last had a one-woman show in 2002. Her work has also been shown in galleries and museums in Europe, the United States and Latin America.

Jean Girigori, whose artistic and personal life seems to waver between legend and reality according to her biographer Frank Martinous, was born on a ship in the Caribbean Sea where her father was working as a sailor. At a very young age, she went to Haiti and studied art with the prestigious master Jean Paúl Héctor. Later she traveled to New York City to continue studying art. Eventually she went to Curazao and began her intense professional period of shows and exhibitions which took her and her work around the world to the most important capitals in the western world.   

This exhibition at the Chavón Cultural Center is made up of some 30 paintings done in various formats and a mixture of mediums on canvas. There  is also a collection of ceramic objects. Dominican art critic Abil Peralta Agüero was invited to curate the show. Peralta Agüero is the author of the essay, “Insignias of Power: The Symbolic Statute and Ritual in the Paintings of Jean Girigori,” which was published in his book about the painter “Jean Girigori – Painter of the Magic Arch.”