Hervé Télémaque was 20 when he left his hometown of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for New York City. It was 1957, the ruinous François Duvalier had just come to power, and Télémaque felt it was time to go. Once in the city, he joined the Art Student’s League and visited museums diligently, enthralled by Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism. He studied the work of Willem de Kooning and Arshile Gorky. Dismayed by the segregation in America, Télémaque moved to France in 1961 and co-founded the Narrative Figuration movement. Cartoons, abstraction, pop color, and a variety of media are combined in his powerful paintings, drawings, collages, and assemblages. Télémaque died on November 10, 2022, at age 85. “I dream of painting almost every night,” he said in one of his last interviews. “Art is a desire to respond to the outside, but still be oneself in its truth.” Here in Aspen, a selection of work by Télémaque. —Elena Clavarino