This major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, « Paris noir, 1950-2000 » (Black Paris, 1950–2000), features 150 African, African-American, and Caribbean artists—most of whom remain relatively unknown—on view until 30 June. Around 400 paintings, sculptures, and archival documents trace their presence in Paris from 1947 (the year the magazine Présence Africaine was founded) through the 1990s, a period marked by the fall of apartheid and the publication of Revue Noire. Subtitled Artistic Circulations and Anti-Colonial Struggles, 1950–2000, the exhibition honors those who were forgotten, ignored, or marginalized. Many artists found refuge in Paris or received their training there, including Ethiopian modernist Skunder Boghossian. Skunder studied at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (1955–56) and later at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière (1957–63). As Elizabeth W. Giorgis wrote in “Modernist Art in Ethiopia,” Skunder’s education in jazz and his love for this style of music also took root in Paris, where the best of African American jazz musicians had flocked. “He knew all of the famed musicians, including Bud Powell, Lester Young, and Sonny Rollins, as well as all of the visual and aural particulars of the Paris jazz world. ”

After World War II, many African American painters, musicians, and intellectuals flocked to Paris, seeking a sense of freedom that they couldn’t find in the United States at the time. Barois De Caevel pointed out that for many, Paris represented a break from the racial segregation that they faced back home. Paris in the 1950s was a crossroads of avant-garde movements—a space of transit, a hub, a launching point, and a point of convergence for emancipatory struggles, both for Africans from colonized countries and for Caribbeans. In short, it was a pan-African laboratory and a vibrant refuge for African-Americans. Even though the capital still hosted colonial-era African exhibitions at the time, an insurrectionary counterculture was also taking shape.

The Haitian artist Roland Dorcély (1930–2017), among others, studied under Fernand Léger. In a letter, he wrote: “One in three traders expected me to wear a loincloth (…) but not to love (…) Seurat.” A close associate of Michel Leiris, Dorcély offered an Afro-modern take on Leda and the Swan. In 1951, Roland Dorcély received a scholarship from the French government and arrived in Paris. He attended the École des Arts et Métiers and studied with Fernand Léger and André Masson. He has also collaborated with Haitian artists Max Pinchinat, Luckner Lazard, and Luce Turnier. In 1953, he married the latter’s sister, Nicole Turnier, also a painter, with whom he had three children. He became friends with Michel Leiris and his wife Louise, who introduced him to the Parisian artistic and intellectual milieu of the time. He returned to Haiti in 1954.

The Martinican artist Georges Coran (1928–2017) revisited the iconic millefleurs tapestries of the Middle Ages, infusing them with the poetry of Aimé Césaire and lush tropical imagery. Senegalese painter Iba N’Diaye (1928–2008), an admirer of Velázquez, redefined portraiture through his strikingly original depictions of Christ. Meanwhile, Ivorian sculptor Christian Lattier (1925–1978) rejected imitation entirely, critically employing the tools of modernity to carve out his place in the grand narrative of art history.

Luce Turnier (1924–1994), one of the first Haitian female painters, arrived in Paris in 1951, studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and painted her Cabane de chantier. Alongside these long-overlooked artists now brought to light, the exhibition also highlights renowned figures such as the Afro-Cuban painter Wifredo Lam (1902–1982), who was introduced to the Parisian art scene by Picasso. A close associate of André Breton and inspired by Aimé Césaire, Lam developed an Afro-Atlantic surrealism of resistance, aiming to “disrupt the dreams of the exploiters.” Totems by another Cuban artist, Agustín Cárdenas (1927–2001), are placed throughout the exhibition, rhythmically punctuating the space.

With Black Paris, a long-standing gap in French institutional recognition is finally addressed. Research on these artists has largely taken place in foreign universities, supported by publications and acquisition programs abroad. Yet Paris—this revolutionary, intersectional crossroads of emancipatory struggles—was undeniably the site of the Tout-Monde cherished by Édouard Glissant. Arriving from Martinique in 1946, Glissant worked at The UNESCO Courier, as René Depestre had before him.

In 1948, South African artist Ernest Mancoba (1904–2002), a member of the CoBrA movement, welcomed his compatriot Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993) to Paris. Sekoto arrived in the city at the age of 34, bringing with him a collection of work depicting scenes of everyday life in the townships of Pretoria. The South African’s self-portrait, now featured as the poster for the exhibition, depicts a man with a tan complexion illuminated by the tawny, coppery light of early evening. With almond-shaped eyes and slightly raised eyebrows, his expression seems to invite attention, subtly drawing the viewer in. Sekoto, who had few exhibitions in Paris, made a living by playing piano and singing in jazz clubs. In the 1970s, he began a series titled Blue Head, which includes These Senegalese Women (1979), where the figures’ silhouettes are crossed by bluish rays of light, rendered with a thin, wavering brushstroke—vague and watery.

The exhibition is full of striking discoveries. Next to a work by Hervé Télémaque (1937–2022), the Haitian-born painter who worked from his studio in Villejuif, close to Paris, we encounter Franco-Senegalese artist Diagne Chanel (b. 1953), trained in Art Deco. From Paris, West Indian artists such as Frantz Absalon (b. 1948) and Alex Burke (b. 1944) present abstract works aimed at cultural disalienation.

Political protest movements are well documented. The presence in the capital of major writers—Césaire, Glissant, Depestre, Maryse Condé, and Frantz Fanon, on the Francophone side—is duly acknowledged, as is that of Miriam Makeba, Archie Shepp, and pioneering filmmakers like Ousmane Sembène and Sarah Maldoror (1919–2020). A trailblazer of pan-African cinema, Maldoror was born in the Gers, southwestern France, to a French mother and Guadeloupean father. Orphaned at a young age, she found a chosen family through the Présence Africaine bookstore. She gave herself a new name, Maldoror—taken from Comte de Lautréamont’s poetic 1868 novel—boldly proclaiming: “I thumb my nose at those slaveholders who, for years, for centuries, named their human merchandise.” With her company, the Griots, she staged Genet’s Les Nègres.

Here is James Baldwin walking through Paris with his friend Beauford Delaney, whom he brought from the United States. Delaney, an Abstract Expressionist before the term existed and a spiritual heir to Van Gogh, recognized what he owed to Paris: “The light inscrutable, eternal, serene, wordless, yet sovereign, moving yet still including all things, silencing all things.” Baldwin recalled, “I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, ‘Look.’ I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, ‘Look again,’ which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can’t explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you’ve had that experience, you see differently.”

This 1955 portrayal of Baldwin is one of several Delaney created. It illustrates how, in numerous respects, the two were kindred souls—both African American, gay artists navigating a society marked by racism and homophobia. In this depiction, the closeness between them is unmistakable.