Ludovic Booz (Haitian, 1940-2015)

Ludovic Booz was born on June 16, 1940, in Aquin, Haiti, and died on February 2nd, 2005. Booz started drawing very early with anything that came to hand: charcoal, chalk, pencil, or pen. He settled in Port-au-Prince in 1946 and began study at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1960. He is both painter and sculptor. His career began at the Art Center, where he encountered Antonio Joseph. Since then, he has sculpted squares of wood from which he derives spiral forms representing women and motherhood. Booz was the first sculptor to use beeswax to treat wood. He is very modern in his concepts; he is said to “sculpt with a brush” and has an astonishing command of color. Among his distinctions are the following special commissions: a bronze bust of President François Duvalier for the Esso Salon; a bronze bust of President John F. Kennedy (Dallas); a burst of President Dumarsais Estimé. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions, notably in Israel, Surinam, and France. (La Peinture Haitienne / Haitian Arts by Marie-José Nadal & Gérald Bloncourt, Editions Nathan, 1986). “The elongated forms found in all his paintings are borrowed from his past as a sculptor” (Gérald Alexis, Peintres Haitiens). Get the Book Here!