Diane Turquety: (In)visible Man: African American Artists and Paris (1945-1984)

From 1945 until the 1980s, the presence and the visibility (residence and/or exhibition) of African American artists in Paris, is a hollow history, in which the physical presence - tradition of transatlantic visit - does not guarantee in itself any actual visibility. Although Paris had long offered new living conditions and opportunities for exhibitions for these artists excluded by segregation and the racism of the American establishment, they were nevertheless, despite a different French sociopolitical context, once again the invisible men of the art world. Not integrated in the American art world, they were absent from exhibitions of American art in France. While installed in France, they were, to a certain measure, as a result of longstanding inherent anti-Americanism, once again excluded from the Parisian art world for being this time - ultimate irony - too well identified as American artists.