MIAMI, FL.- In support of Hatian artist Didier William, whose first solo exhibition is currently on view at Galerie Schuster Berlin/Miami, the gallery has raised more than $10,000 for Doctors Without Borders’ relief efforts in Haiti, gallery owner Helmut Schuster announced today. The gallery’s exhibition of Didier William’s New Paintings will run from March 20 through May 11 in Miami at 2085 NW 2nd Avenue.

“Didier William’s work is inspired by and intimately tied to Haiti. We wanted to help address the devastation in his homeland,” Schuster says. “Disasters like this one might be in the news for a week, but the problems—the lack of electricity, potable water, basic hygiene, shelter, access to medical care, fuel, telephones—continue. It was important to us to contribute, even in a small way, to help the Haitian people.”

Galerie Schuster donated one-third of the proceeds from the exhibition’s opening weekend to support relief efforts in Haiti. Wanting to do more than that, Schuster sent an email to Berlin galleries, affiliated artists, local and regional art centers, museum directors and collectors, asking them to donate art works for a silent auction, with all of the net proceeds to support the work of Doctors Without Borders’ work in Haiti. “Within ten days, we had sixty major pieces,” the gallery owner says. So, for the show’s opening weekend, Schuster and Miami’s Little Haiti Cultural Center organized a silent auction replete with Haitian food, music, and both the German and Haitian consulate generals in attendance; items that did not sell then will continue to be sold on the Internet.

The initiative, Schuster notes, is consistent with the humanistic, sometimes political, nature of Didier William’s work. The artist’s bold, colorful paintings reflect the influence of his Haitian homeland and evoke the joy, pathos, pain and humanity of the island nation and its people. “Didier William is for us one of the world’s most important emerging artists of the last few years,” Schuster says. “He is a superb draftsman, an extraordinary painter, and a brilliant colorist with a very clear message and vision. We are proud to welcome him to Galerie Schuster as one of its key artists, to present his work in Miami, and to bring it to our gallery in the Heidestrasse, in Berlin, later this year.”