Llewellyn Xavier

In 2016 he was honored with a solo exhibition at Phillips in New York. On the occasion of the exhibition, Edward Dolman, the CEO of Phillips, called Xavier “one of the greatest artists ever to emerge from the Caribbean…a dynamic voice in the dialogue between globalization and localism.”

Xavier received the OBE in 2004 in recognition of his contributions to the art of the Commonwealth. He is the founder of the Saint Lucia Sculpture Park, intended to bring public art to the landscape of the island.

Probably Xavier's most important work to date is a large cycle of collages created around 1993. Titled Global Council for Restoration of the Earth's Environment, it was first shown at the Patrick Cramer Gallery in Geneva in May of that year. The collages incorporate all manner of recycled materials, including naturalist prints from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and postage stamps from many countries. They also include signatures of various world leaders of environmentalism and of a number of conservationists.

Xavier left Saint Lucia for Barbados in 1962, working as an agricultural apprentice for a time. A friend gave him a box of watercolors, and he was soon drawn to art. His first exhibition was a great success, and soon his reputation was established. In 1968, Xavier moved to England, where he became a pioneer in the field of mail art. He enrolled in the school of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1979, and for a time was a Cistercian monk in Montreal. After a time, he left the monastery, marrying and returning to Saint Lucia in 1987.

Llewellyn Xavier OBE (born 12 October 1945) is a Saint Lucian artist.