Note:  With the high cost of shipping many of our customers have chosen to ship by USPS.   For small and light shipments this is usually less expensive, but please be aware that the service is not always as economical as it may appear.    USPS estimates only include insurance up to $100 for its domestic shipments, and varying amounts for overseas shipments.  If you ask for full insurance we will send you an invoice for any difference in cost. 

Out There!

March 1, 2023 to April 30, 2023

An Online Exhibition of Outsider Art

Indigo Arts isn't exhibiting at the Outsider Art Fair this year, but there is plenty to see here. The selection of artwork is "Out There", in the geographic as well as the figurative sense. One may prefer to call the art Outsider, Art Brut, Intuitive, Visionary, Naif or Self-taught. Each term has its own advantages and limitations, and some artists fit more comfortably under one name than another. 

These artists also come from outside of the Eurocentric and Americocentric realms that have long dominated the field of Art Brut. The work originates from sources as diverse as villages of Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria, remote Mexican pueblos, Adivasi settlements in India, and the fringe communities of Havana, Nairobi and Port-au-Prince.

Artists in the Indigo Arts collection include:

Haitian artist Frantz Jacques, who goes by Guyodo, an innovative and charismatic recycler-artist who lives and works in the ruins of Port-au Prince's "Grand Rue".  His work has been shown in New York, Paris and at the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland.  Guyodo works alongside other members of the Atis Rezistans (literally artists of the resistance) and a group of young artists known as the "Timoun Rezistans" (children of the resistance).   Other Haitian recycler sculptors include Kesnard and Davidson Thermidor and the anonymous artists who fashioned helicopters and armored vehicles from plastic milk bottles during the 1994 US-led invasion of Haiti.

Gerard Fortuné, a Haitian painter who worked most of his life out of a few shacks nestled in the woods between two walled compounds of the elite above Port-au-Prince.  A monograph of his work was published a few years before his death in 2019.

Cuban outsider Wayacon, a resourceful mixed media artist in Cienfuegos who fashions art out of whatever he finds.  “Wayacon is a fish that swims in all kind of water, both dirty and clean", he explains.

Three other Cuban artists who found solace in art after major psychological crises:  Damian Valdez Dilla, and Carlos Garcia Huergo work in Havana today, and have shown their work internationally.  Carlos' life and work are featured in "Carlitos' Way", an article in the Spring 2023 issue of Raw Vision.  Mario Mesa (1928 - 2016), who had been either a political prisoner or a mental patient or both in Cuba, arrived in Miami during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980.   Art  programs for the mentally ill in Florida led him to a second career as an artist.  

Kenyan artist Kamante Gatura (1912 - 1985), who found early fame of a sort as the young cook in Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen's memoir Out of Africa.  Nearly 60 years later his artistic talents were encouraged by the American expatriate photographer Peter Beard.  He illustrated several of Beard's books and produced a large body of drawings of Kikuyu traditions and African wildlife.

"Sane" Mbugua Wadu, a Kenyan self-taught expressionist who early took the name "Sane" as a retort to the many people who pronounced him insane.  Today he has created an art foundation in his home town of Naivasha, where the children of his community receive art lessons.  

Lengisia Lekulen, a Maasai askari or guard who makes delicate pointillistic ink drawings of Tanzanian wildlife.  

Phillip Oluwafemi Babarinlo, a Yoruba artist from Oshogbo in Nigeria.   Long associated with the "Oshogbo school" of post-independence artists, such as Twins Seven-Seven and Asiru Olatunde, he has followed his own path in the US.

Ivorian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (1923 - 2014), an encyclopedic artist who sought to catalog all aspects of his Bété culture and language, and of the world as a whole, in hundreds of index card sized pen and crayon drawings.  How work was featured last year in a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré:  World Unbound.

Self-taught, naif artists from the countryside outside of Santiago, Cuba, such as Francisco Ravelo Calunga  Angel Llopiz Martinez and Roberto Torres Lameda.

Sign Painters from Haiti and West Africa.

Haitian Koupe Fè artists such as Gabriel Bien-Aimé, who has hammered raw and quirky sculptures out of recycled steel oil drums for over fifty years.  While other artists have followed the lure of production designs for the garden and boutique market, he has persisted with his singular creations.  His work was celebrated in the groundbreaking 1989 show at the Centre Pompidou in Paris,  Magiciens de la Terre.  

Indigenous or Adivasi artists from India, whose innovative work is nurtured by traditional 'tribal" art styles, including Bhil painter Bhuri Bai, Warli artist Shantaram Tumbada and Baiga painter Shagun Devi.

Haitian drapo Vodou artists who have taken the traditional liturgical art of the sequined and beaded Vodou flag far beyond its traditional roots.  Artists include Evelyn AlcideRoudy Azor, Mireille DeliceYves Telemak and many whose works are unsigned.

Jesus Lorenzo and other members of the prolific Lorenzo clan of Guerrero, Mexico, who have followed their late patriarch Lucas Lorenzo, creating small paintings on masonite which blend the folk arts of amaté paintings with the Mexican ex-voto painting.

Pierrot Barra (1942 -1999) a Haitian bizango priest who sold his spectacular mixed media Vodou sculptures out of a booth in Port-au-Prince's old  Marché de Fer.  His works, celebrated in the book, Vodou Things: The Art of Pierrot Barra and Marie Cassaise, are rare today.

SKU: JRO03

Jimmy Romain (Port-au-Prince, Haiti) Oil on plywood (13 x 10), c. 2009

$ 250

Harvesting Honey from a Tree
SKU: PTR-2001

Tanzania, c.1980.
Oil enamel on masonite board (12" h. x 12" w.).

$250

Winged Spirit Sculpture
SKU: WDTH1701

Wender Thelisma (1995 - 2013) - Timoun Rezistans (Port-au-Prince, Haiti)
Mixed media (wood, aluminum, steel, glass, paint, etc.)
(14 1/2” h. x 7” w. x 6 3/4” d.), c. 2010

$250

Lord Shiva and Disciple with Snake, Bird and Scorpions
SKU: SHD-2003

Shagun Devi -  Baiga people, Madhya Pradesh State, India
2019/2020
Acrylic on paper
(10" h. x 14" w. )

$225

Bagesur Dev (Tiger God) with two figures, birds and insects
SKU: SHD-2004

Shagun Devi -  Baiga people, Madhya Pradesh State, India
2019/2020
Acrylic on paper
(10 1/4" h. x 13 3/4" w. )

$225

Blue Face
SKU: ADR-2001

Adriana - Timoun Rezistans artist, Grand Rue (Port-au-Prince, Haiti)
Tempera, acrylic on recycled cardboard.
(15 3/4” x 11 1/4”), c. 2019

$225

Face
SKU: OLV-2001

Olivier - Timoun Rezistans artist, Grand Rue (Port-au-Prince, Haiti)
Tempera, acrylic on recycled cardboard.
(15" x 12 1/2”), c. 2019

$225

Dark Face
SKU: SZE-2001

Suze - Timoun Rezistans artist, Grand Rue (Port-au-Prince, Haiti)
Tempera, acrylic on recycled cardboard.
(17 1/4” x 12 1/4”), c. 2019

$225

Figure with Bird
SKU: PYS-0902

Acrylic on canvas (10" x 8"), Framed
c. 2000

$225 Framed

Face
SKU: KTL-2201

Cathline.  Grand Rue, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
Paint and on recycled plywood with rubber inner-tube frame.
(16" h. x 12" w. x 1 1/4" d.), c. 2022

$225

Bagesur Dev (Tiger God with snake)
SKU: SHD-2005

Shagun Devi -  Madhya Pradesh State, India
2019/2020
Acrylic on paper
(9" h. x 12" w. )

The Baiga tribe worship the tiger god, Bagesur Dev.  The snake symbolizes lord Shiva.

$195

El Abrazo - Circa del Rio
SKU: FRC-2101

(Mella, Cuba)
Acrylic on canvas (8" x 10"), c.2019

$185

Untitled (Adam and Eve)
SKU: MRO-2301

Cut out recycled rubber inner-tube figures
(14 1/2" h. x 8" w. x 1/4" d.), c. 2015

$175

Blue Bear
SKU: BHB-2101

Bhuri Bai - Pitol, Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh State, India
c.2020
Acrylic on paper
(7 1/4” x 10 3/4” )

$175

Two Green People in a Yellow Car
SKU: BHB-2103

Bhuri Bai - Pitol, Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh State, India
c.2020
Acrylic on paper
(7 1/4” x 10 3/4” )

$175

Bossou Antique Vodou Banner
SKU: VYF-6

Sequins and beads on fabric
(32" x 39"), c. 1980.
Note:  Artworks from this collection generally must be shipped from the collection rather than directly from our gallery.  Please allow a few more days for shipment to your location.

$ 1,600

Product Status: 
ON HOLD
Baiga Dancers
SKU: SHD-2006

Shagun Devi -  Baiga people, Madhya Pradesh State, India
2019/2020
Acrylic on paper
(8 1/4" h. x 11 3/4" w. )

Dancers during a Birhanniya festival.

$195

Product Status: 
Sold
White Face
SKU: BH-2001

Bicheton - Timoun Rezistans artist, Grand Rue (Port-au-Prince, Haiti)
Tempera, acrylic on recycled cardboard.
(16 1/4" x 12 1/2”), c. 2019

Price on Request

Product Status: 
Sold