The Haitian artist and writer known as Frankétienne, who published the first novel written entirely in Haitian Creole and who, as the nation’s foremost literary lion, refracted its chaos and disorder through art, died on Thursday at his home in Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital. He was 88.
The Haitian Culture Ministry announced the death. The cause was not specified.
“Through his writings, he illuminated the world, carried the soul of Haiti and defied silence,” Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé said in a statement.
Frankétienne was a prolific novelist, poet and painter — often all three in a single work — whose art embraced and interpreted the chaos of the small, tumultuous country he came from.
“I am not afraid of chaos because chaos is the womb of light and life,” he said in a 2011 interview with The New York Times at his rambling gallery and home, in a working-class district of Port-au-Prince. “What I don’t like is nonmanagement of chaos. The reason Haiti looks more chaotic is because of nonmanagement. ‘’
While not well known in the English-speaking world, Frankétienne was a larger-than-life figure in Haiti and was celebrated in French and Creole-speaking literary and diaspora circles around the world. He garnered an Order of Arts and Letters award in France, and his lively, unpredictable appearances drew crowds.
His output was varied and extensive, including some 50 written works in French and Haitian Creole and thousands of paintings and sketches, characterized by spirals of blacks, blues and reds, often with poems layered in.
