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Art & artists  Art Terms  N  Négritude

N ÉG R I T U D E
Négritude was an anti-colonial cultural and political movement founded by a group of African
and Caribbean students in Paris in the 1930s who sought to reclaim the value of blackness
and African culture

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Aubrey Williams
Death and the Conquistador 1959
Tate
© The estate of Aubrey Williams

INTRODUCTION
Négritude was lead by the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, French Guianese poet Léon Damas
and the future Senegalese President (who was also a poet) Léopold Sédar Senghor. It was
influenced by a range of styles and art movements including surrealism and the Harlem
Renaissance. With the outbreak of the Second World War and the dispersal of its artists and
intellectuals from Paris, Négritude became a global art movement.

O R I G I N S A N D D E V E LO PM E N T O F T H E MOV E M E N T
In 1937 Paris, with its diverse and tolerant art scene, became the centre of the international
Négritude movement. In the face of growing fascism, black students, scholars and artists
from French colonies in Africa and the Caribbean got together with the aim of promoting an
appreciation of the history and culture of black people. They also wanted to draw attention to
the experience of those who had lived under colonial rule, including slavery. At the outbreak
of the Second World War its leaders left Paris for the Caribbean and Africa and new forms of
Négritude arose in these locations, including creolisation in the Caribbean and the Natural
Synthesis movement in Nigeria. After the war Paris again became the centre for Négritude
activities. Many artists from Africa and the Caribbean came to Europe to study and gravitated
to Paris, meeting at the Clamart tea-shop, the Négritude base on the Left Bank. Among these
were London students Frank Bowling, Aubrey Williams, Donald Locke, Ben Enwonwu and Uzo
Egonu.

N ÉG R I T U D E I D E A S A N D ST Y L E
Négritude artists incorporated concepts and characteristics derived from a diverse range of
sources and studies in order to critique imperialism and imperial art and to assert a new
world avant-garde.

In 1956 one of the movement’s leading voices, Léopold Sédar Senghor, argued that for black
culture to transcend its past and reflect modernity it must acknowledge its own traditions but
combine this with an open approach to new ideas and developments in art. Artist Ben
Enwonwu put it clearly in an important article Problems of the African Artist Today which was
published in the journal Présence Africaine the same year. He argued that while West African
culture was seen in terms of ethnography and anthropology and African art characterised as
primitive, an ‘intellectual barrier’ existed ‘which makes it extremely difficult for most Africans
to be considered qualified to play an important part in the development and preservation of
their art’. He called for an international African art, that responded to contemporary life and
times but was also aware of traditional, local and global influences:

I will not accept an inferior position in the art world…European artists like Picasso, Braque
and Vlaminck were influenced by African art. Everybody sees that and is not opposed to it.
But when they see African artists who are influenced by their European training and
technique, they expect that African to stick to their traditional forms … I do not copy
traditional art. I like what I see in the works of people like Giacometti but I do not copy
them… I knew he was influenced by African sculptures. But I would not be influenced by
Giacometti, because he was influenced by my ancestors.

WO R L D F E ST I VA L O F N EG R O A RTS
In 1966 Senghor organised the World Festival of Negro Arts. This provided the first occasion
for many black artists, musicians, writers, poets and actors to participate in a global
examination of African culture. It was Senghor’s first opportunity to promote the concept of
négritude, and he hoped that the festival would promote négritude as a viable philosophical
model.

The festival was also a chance for a complex revaluation of African tribal art, which had until
then been viewed with a certain indifference by the African diaspora. For the first time in
Africa, tribal art was to be examined as art.
The event led to the beginnings of the international black arts movement.

N ÉG R I T U D E A RT I STS I N FO C U S

R O N A L D MO O DY

Jamaican-born British artist Ronald Moody moved to Paris in 1938 where he met artists and
intellectuals associated with Négritude. He enjoyed two years of increasing recognition before
being forced to leave the city and abandon his sculptures two days before it fell to the
Germans. Using direct carving he created sculptures that showed the influence of Asian and
Egyptian art which he had seen in the British Museum in London; while also looking to the
present and future by representing ‘the exploration of the inner life of man and the
possibility of evolution through self-awareness’. He later stated: ‘My present is the result of
the friction of Europe with my past,’ which itself is ‘a mixture of African, Asian and European
influences’.

WIFREDO LAM

Wifredo Lam was perhaps the most prominent and successful of the Négritude artists. Born in
Cuba he moved to Spain in 1924, and then to Paris in 1938 where he met Pablo Picasso,
André Breton and other surrealist artists. His paintings combine African art motifs and
references to Afro-Caribbean culture with cubist and surrealist ‘primitivism’.

R E L AT E D T E R M S A N D CO N C E PTS

A L B UM

Photograph of Ben Nicholson

holding his cat, Tommy
  A RT T E R M
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Postcolonial art
Postcolonial art refers to art produ
response to the aftermath of colon
 A RT T E R M
frequently addressing issues of na

Black Atlantic
Black Atlantic describes the fusion of black
cultures with other cultures from around the
Atlantic

E X P LO R E T H I S T E R M
 
 READ

Auntie Flo: The sound of

Wifredo Lam  ESSA
 TAT E E TC
DJ and producer, Brian d’Souza aka A rep
Legacies of Empire: Artist Auntie Flo shares his selection of
The re
tracks inspired by The EY
and Empire at Tate Britain sculp
Exhibition: Wifredo Lam
Andrew Gilbert , Hew Locke and Guy Bre
Simon Grant1
Self-tau
Tate Britain’s forthcoming Moody,
exhibition Artist and Empire is the Jamaica
first large-scale presentation of the Britain's
art associated with the British Modern
Empire …

S E L EC T E D A RT I STS I N T H E CO L L EC T I O N
Wifredo Lam
1902–1982
Frank Bowling
born 1934
Ronald Moody
1900–1984

Aubrey Williams
1926–1990

S E L EC T E D A RT WO R K S I N T H E CO L L EC T I O N
 Aubrey

Olme
Comin
1985

Ronald Moody

Midonz Wifredo Lam

1937 [no title]

1975–6

View by appointment

N ÉG R I T U D E AT TAT E
TAT E MO D E R N
EXHIBITION

The EY Exhibition: Wifredo Lam

14 Sep 2016 – 8 Jan 2017

Discover the fascinating career of Wifredo Lam, one of the most iconic Cuban artists of
the twentieth-century
TAT E L I V E R P O O L
EXHIBITION

Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic

29 Jan – 25 Apr 2010

Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic; 2010 Tate Liverpool exhibition tracing
the impact of Black Atlantic culture on Modernism.
TAT E B R I TA I N
EXHIBITION

Artist and Empire

25 Nov 2015 – 10 Apr 2016

This autumn Tate Britain presents a major exhibition of art associated with the British
Empire from the 16th century to …