Oil on board, circa 1956. 483x1092 mm; 19x43 inches. Signed "Loïs Jones Pierre-Noël", dated and inscribed "Haiti" in oil, lower right.
Provenance: collection of the artist, with her Quincy Street, Washington, DC address inscribed in pencil on the frame back; private collection, Washington, DC; private collection, Pennsylvania.
This painting was entered in the 1956 Annual Fall Review of Paintings and Sculpture at the Pyramid Club, Philadelphia, with the entry label still attached to the frame back.
This vibrant, semi-abstract oil on board is an experimental painting by Loïs Mailou Jones. Fire Dancers is one of her more abstract paintings from the 1950s. It was painted after her marriage to the Haitian artist Louis Verginaud Pierre-Noël - the artist signed with her husband's name for only a year or so. In 1954 she was first invited by the Haitian president and the government to paint its landscape and people. Jones also served as a guest art professor at the Centre d'Art and Foyer des Arts Plastiques, Port-au-Prince, where she met many artists. In 1956, she and her husband travelled back to Haiti and France. Hanzal p. 137; Tritobia p. 77.
