The Musée du Centre Pompidou is hosting the “Paris Noir” exhibition, from 19 March to 30 June 2025, dedicated to 150 artists from African and Afro-American descent who lived in Paris and contributed with their works to the city from 1940 to 2000.
“Paris Noir” traces the journeys of African, Afro-American and Caribbean artists who “immersed themselves in Paris ‘worlds”: a space of artistic resistance and creativity which helped create an awareness of identity. As well as a search for various visual languages. “From Universal to Afro-Atlantic abstraction, surrealism and free form, the historical journey unfolds the significance of artists of African descent in redefining modernism and postmodernism”, reads the Centre Pompidou’s Introduction to the exhibition.
The event offers an opportunity to explore little-known works of modern art, dealing with “Negro” art, the Afrikaans and independence era, and at the same time the black feminist movement and anti-racism.
According to Alicia Knock and Eva Barrois de Cavell, both curators at the Musée national d’art contemporain of the Centre Pompidou, “Paris Noir” aims to integrate the post-colonial period into the Art history from the second half of the twentieth century, in order to develop new thinking and enable new working methodologies to be put in place.
