Collection: Tamara Baussan (Russia,1909-Haiti,1999)

Tamara Baussan was born in Bakou, Russia, in 1909, and died in Petion-Ville, Haiti, in 1999. She learned painting as a child. In the late 1920s, she traveled to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where she met and later married Robert Baussan, a Haitian studying Architecture. They moved to Haiti in 1931, or 1942, and were essential collaborators in the founding of the Centre d'Art in 1944. Baussan was Haiti's first female painter, with Andrée Naudé and Michele Manuel, of "the Atelier de la Tête de l'Eau." "Her use of vivid colors heightens the power of her drawings," as Gerald describes her art in his book Peintres Haitiens.