Elizabeth Colomba is a French-born artist and storyteller who utilizes historical events to weave narratives of Black women who lived in past times, typically genuine but occasionally fictional.
Elizabeth Colomba
Elizabeth Colomba was born to Martinican parents in France, 1971. Growing up in a family-run Caribbean restaurant, her mother supported her art-ventures by decorating the space with her watercolor works.
Afterwards, she attended the École Estienne and the Beaux-Arts de Paris in Paris to pursue formal art education. She began her career as a storyboard and illustrator in the Los Angeles film industry after graduation before relocating to New York to pursue her artistry. Deborah Willis, a MacArthur Fellow and mother of artist Hank Willis Thomas, discovered Colomba and her career took off, with institutions such as the Studio Museum in Harlem and Princeton University purchasing her pieces.
Currently, Elizabeth Colomba continues to work in New York and just published her first graphic novel, Queenie: Godmother of Harlem, in January 2023.
Colomba was first inspired by Pablo Picasso at six years old after seeing his work in a Parisian newspaper. After spending much of her teenage years in the library, she also encountered two volumes of The Image of the Black in Western Art, created and supported by French-American art patrons John and Dominique de Menil. Since then, she has explored the idea of seeing women like herself as subjects in art.
She depicts historical Black figures in her artwork in opulent environments where they were either marginalized or forgotten. Her intention is to portray Black people in a way that has not been done before in the history of art. The paintings of Colomba are similar to Dutch Baroque artists like Johannes Vermeer in terms of the lighting, hues, richness of the subjects' attire, and setting, but Colomba's subjects represent Black women.
“Colomba's paintings have been exhibited at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; the Balthus Grand Chalet, Switzerland; the International Biennial of Contemporary Art (BIAC), Martinique; Volta, New York; the Fondazione Biagiotti Progetto Arte, Florence and the inaugural triennial at Columbia University… Her work is included in the permanent collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem and Princeton University” (Elizabeth-Colomba).