Émmelie Prophète Milcé Minister of Culture salutes the memory of Michèle Manuel, who died at the age of 87, a great figure of Haitian painting who shone for more than sixty years in the environment of the Haitian art.

Born in 1935, Michèle Manuel, alias "the painter of light" whose career began in 1960, was trained successively at the Port-au-Prince Art Center, then in Puerto Rico and at the University of Rochester in New York State. Michèle Manuel has always been a team woman who had enjoyed working with a group of Haitian women painters determined to fight against the gender prejudices that were deeply rooted in the art world in Haiti.

From the 1960s, she participated in exhibitions both in Haiti and abroad where her extraordinary talent and a style that had distinguished her from her contemporaries had been revealed.

"In this sad circumstance, the Ministry of Culture and Communication joins the entire nation in presenting its sincere condolences to the members of Michèle Manuel's family."

The book "Michèle Manuel, Peintre de la lumière", published by Editions Zémès in 2019, under the artistic direction of her daughter Lorraine Manuel Steed, is the only catalog that bears witness to the richness of her work and resolutely modern of this great artist.

IH/ iciHaiti