Roland Dorcély, (Port-au-Prince, Haiti 1930–2017 New York City, New York), Hats, c. 1958-60, Oil on canvas, 21 1/4 x 25 1/2 in. (54 x 65 cm), Museum purchase, The Class of 1947 Acquisition Fund 2021.7

The Davis Museum recently purchased Roland Dorcély’s painting Hats, which is the first work by the artist in the collections. Born in 1930, Dorcély was a leading Haitian artist and poet by the mid-twentieth century. After leaving the Arts Centre in Port-au-Prince because it privileged folk traditions over formal artistic training, he moved to Paris, where he became closely connected to key intellectuals. There, Dorcély continued his studies directly with the avant-garde, including Fernand Léger—whose influence is particularly evident in the present work—and André Masson, and became friends with artists such as Wifredo Lam and Roberto Matta. His popularity extended to the United States, as art collectors Keith and Edna Warner sponsored two solo exhibitions in Hanover, New Hampshire in 1958 and 1959.  In addition to his prominence as a visual artist, the magazine Les Temps Modernes, edited by Jean-Paul Sartre, published his poetry. Dorcély resided in the center of the Parisian art world for a short time, and then withdrew from the arts at age 33 in 1963.

Hats is typical of his work of the late 1950s, featuring organic forms in bold colors that suggest an identifiable scene. Blocks of flat primary colors repeat across the canvas and allude to the shape of hats. Objects emerge across the canvas: a house with a dark doorway on the right; a table or maybe hat stand in the lower left. The title and hat-like forms throughout indicate that perhaps this is a milliner’s shop window. The curvilinear forms and bold graphic lines accentuate Dorcély’s concern with formalism. A captivating work that plays with perspective, Hats represents Dorcély’s experimentation with inventing new views of the world that he traveled.