A Haitian artist known for brightly colored images of birds, animals, landscapes and still life, Gesner Armand began painting seriously when he was fourteen years old and was enrolled at the Haitian Art Center. His primary teachers were watercolorists Maurice Borno and Pierre Monosiet. When he was age 20, he turned from watercolor painting to oil. The next year, 1957, he went to Mexico where he studied ceramics and sculpture and spent much time exploring prominent Mexican painters.

Four years later, Armand Gesner returned briefly to Haiti and then went to Paris, having earned a scholarship to paint in Paris from the French government. In Paris, where he remained for the next two years, he exhibit...