Elizabeth Colomba

Elizabeth Colomba (born 1976) is a French painter of Martinique heritage known for her paintings of black people in historic settings. Her work has been shown at the Gracie Mansion, the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, and will be at the Musée d'Orsay in spring 2019.[1][2]

Elizabeth Colomba
Born
Èpinay-sur-Seine, France
NationalityFrench
EducationÉcole des Beaux-Arts
Known forHistorical paintings and portraits of black subjects
Notable work
Laure (Portrait of a Negresse) (2018)

Early life

Colomba was born in Èpinay-sur-Seine, where her parents had immigrated to from Martinique. She began painting early, making watercolors as a child to decorate her parents' Caribbean restaurant. As a teenager, she read The Image of the Black in Western Art by John and Dominique de Menil, which inspired her to paint a portrait of her great-grandmother in the style of Whistler’s Mother. She continued study the paintings of Louvre, especially the Dutch masters, and attended the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1998, she moved to Los Angeles and worked in storyboarding and illustration for the film industry.[1]

Paintings

Colomba started spending time in New York in 2007 to further her painting career, and moved to the city permanently in 2011. She met artist Deborah Willis in 2010 after Willis saw one of her paintings at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, and Willis helped her enter the New York art world.[1] In 2016, she had a solo exhibition of works at the Long Gallery in Harlem, which The New Yorker described as "opulent portraits of black women [that] redress the erasures of women of color in nineteenth-century art history."[3]

In 2018, she painted Laure (Portrait of a Negresse) which is a reinterpretation of a painting by Edouard Manet which has the same title and was done in 1863-1863.[1]

Her 2015 piece Haven, depicting a black couple in Weeksville, was featured in a 2019 show at the Gracie Mansion organized by Chirlane McCray.[4][5]

References
  1. "Painter Elizabeth Colomba Is Giving Art's Hidden Figures Their Close-Up". Vogue. Retrieved 2019-02-26.
  2. Widdicombe, Ben (2018-03-27). "A Publicist and D.J. Who Nurtures Underrepresented Artists". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-02-26.
  3. "Elizabeth Colomba". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2019-02-26.
  4. Steinhauer, Jillian (2019-01-20). "On Display at the People's House: A Century of Persistence". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-02-26.
  5. "At the Mayor's Mansion in New York, a Powerful Art Show Honors the Diversity of 100 Years of Women's Struggles". artnet News. 2019-02-11. Retrieved 2019-02-26.


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