FRITZ LAMOTHE
Haitian, b. 1933
Fritz Lamothe was born in Haiti in 1961, but left to join his parents in New York at age 4. Living on the Brooklyn streets by the age of sixteen, he began painting as the graffiti artist ‘Frenchy’ on the subway trains of New York. This way of life came to an end when, along with fellow graffiti artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lamothe was taken up by the New York art world.
After Basquiat’s death, in 1988, Lamothe returned to Haiti, where, his work matured, combining its original urban, Neo-Expressionist style with the vibrant colors of the Caribbean, and the sacred diagrams of Voodoo. Now internationally acclaimed, he has worked in France, Germany, Japan and the USA.
Fritz Lamothe’s raw and visceral paintings reflect fragments of his varied past. The combination of Haiti’s vibrant artistic life and political instability, including coup against Aristide in 1991, gave a specific vision to his work. Through all this turbulent history, his work continues to reflect unbroken and honest vision of the world.
