In 1955 José Gómez Sicre, the chief of the Visual Arts Division of the Pan American Union, was introduced to the work of Georges Liautaud by the U.S. artist DeWitt Peters. Gómez Sicre began championing Liautaud’s work by nominating it for participation in major exhibitions such as the 1958 Pittsburgh International at the Carnegie Institute and the 1959 São Paulo Biennial. Among Liautaud’s production, his versions of the Crucifixion stood out for their originality. On the occasion of his 1960 solo exhibition at OAS headquarters, the Cuban-born curator wrote, “In his compositions Liautaud makes use of iron (generally from empty gasoline drums) and, occasionally, tin sheets. He cuts, grates, or perforates the pieces, combining them to form flat, two-dimensional creatures of fancy – strange beasts, mermaids, and the like. When, however, he turns to three-dimensional sculpture, the subject matter is generally Catholic.” Crucifixion depicts in cut and hammered metal a beardless Christ figure with an open and grinning mouth. The crown of thorns consists of barbed wire. Crossing the body from front to back are two snakes, the symbol of the Voodoo loa Damballah Wedo, who brings peace and harmony to the world. His companion, Ayida Wedo is the oldest and wisest of the female loas and she is the cosmic protector and giver of blessings. This sculpture is a perfect example of the spiritual syncretism found throughout the Caribbean and Brazil, where the iconography of Catholicism is fused with the symbols of the belief systems of the descendants of African slaves. Liautaud endowed this traditional subject with an earthy and sardonic sensibility reflective of Haiti’s Voodoo. Georges Liautaud was born in Haiti. He started out earning a living as a blacksmith who forged farm tools and crosses for cemeteries in his town. By the mid-1940s he was working with cut and forged metal from empty oil drums. At this time the U.S. artist DeWitt Peters, who had founded the Centre d’ Art in Port-au-Prince, noticed Liautaud’s sculpture and began to promote it. Liautaud’s work and that of other Haitian folk painters and sculptors was discussed in Selden Rodman’s influential 1948 book Renaissance in Haiti. Curator José Gómez Sicre became aware of Liautaud’s production in 1955, but was not able to offer him a solo exhibition at OAS headquarters in Washington, D.C. until 1960. After that, Gómez Sicre included Liautaud in three group exhibitions in 1966, 1974, and 1976. Together with fellow sculptors Gabriel Bien-Aimé, Serge Jolimeau, and Murat Brierre, Liautaud lived and worked in the artist’s village of Noailles, where they all worked in “bosmétal,” cut, hammered, and forged metal from oil drums. In terms of iconography, Liautaud fuses Voodoo and Christian subjects in his sculptures. Liautaud was among the first folk artists from the Americas to represent his country at international exhibitions, such as the Pittsburgh International at the Carnegie Institute in 1958, and the São Paulo Biennial the following year. In 1989 his work was included in the exhibition Magiciens de la terre at the National Museum of Modern Art Georges Pompidou in Paris. In 2009 UNESCO inaugurated the Georges Liautaud Museum in Noailles. The Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince has the largest collection of the artist’s work. He died in 1999.