Stivenson Magloire was born in Petionville, Haiti, on August 16, 1963. He was named after Adlai Stevenson but changed the “e” to “i” after both registration clerks and the school kept misspelling it. His mother is the Saint-Soleil School painter Louisianne St. Fleurant. Stivenson began to paint at 12 but found his true style after accompanying his mother to a commemoration ceremony for Duvalierist victims outside Fort Dimanche. At that time, Louisane had been injured. His identification with the popular cause was confirmed when General Namphy’s soldiers massacred Pere Aristide’s followers and torched his church. This massacre triggered Namphy’s ouster by General Avril Prosper and Sgt. Stivenson’s paintings are rarely political, but the violence of the last he lived was undoubtedly reflected in his imagination. The white bird, sometimes fallen and bleeding, sometimes triumphant, symbolizes freedom; the crossed forks, darts, and comets represent the forces threatening vulnerable Haiti. Is the family Christian? The lines between Haiti’s two dominant religions are hard to draw. Stivenson crosses himself before beginning to paint: so he says, because he is working under tension and the divinity invoked reduces the pressure. Asked whether he aims to be a great artist, he answers sensibly: only to be different from all others, an ambition in which he succeeded magnificently. His paintings are expressionistic and populated with bizarre people, birds, and symbols. He was stoned to death in broad daylight on October 9, 1994, by personal enemies during the chaos that accompanied the first days of the US occupation of Haiti. Gérald Alexis, in his book Peintres Haitiens, refers to him as having “refused to join the Saint-Soleil Movement, unlike his sister.” His art is widely collected and can be admired at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa. Visit us online!