Paul Colin (27 June 1892 – 18 June 1985) born in Nancy, France, died in Nogent-sur-Marne. Colin was a prolific master illustrator of Decorative Arts posters. Alexandre-Marie Colin (5 December 1798 – 21 November 1875) was a relative.

Paul Colin was a professional artist, scenographer, graphic designer and theatre painter. He specialised in theatre sets, book design and costume design. During his lifetime he created over 1900 posters and worked in theatre for more than 40 years. He was praised for the perfect combination of organic and graphic themes with geometric forms. He was influenced by Surrealism and Cubism, typically using very exaggerated shapes, striking colours and very stylised art forms in his work. He used a large palette of colours to emphasise the energy and meaning conveyed by his subjects, and his art is strongly in the style of the Art Deco movement. Many of his most famous illustrations were created for Jazz Age music and theatre. His designs incorporate jazz elements, bold and striking colors, Cubist and Surrealist. Highly stylized or caricaturized humanoids are strangely juxtaposed with geometrically overlapping objects such as Cubist collages. His own background in painting and his love of theatre helped him to become one of the most important French poster artists of the 1920s and 1930s.

Colin designed posters for artists and theatres such as the Folies Bergère, the Moulin Rouge and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. In addition, he produced posters for various festivals, exhibitions, products and companies. For example, he designed posters for French films such as Le Voyage Imaginaries and produced stage and costume designs for theatres. He taught for over 40 years at the "Ecole Paul Colin" graphic arts school in Paris, where many graphic artists and designers have benefited.

He was the master of painter Philippe Derome and poster artists duo Lefor-Openo

An original vintage poster of singer and Broadway star Adelaide Hall by Paul Colin advertising Blackbirds at the Moulin Rouge in 1929, sold on 2 October 2003 at Swann Auction Galleries in New York for $167,500. The sale signalled a record high for an original Paul Colin poster.

Paul Colin was a maestro of the Art Deco poster. He was one of the most important graphic artists of his time, creating more than 1,900 posters, and was a master of designing books, theatre sets and costumes. He apprenticed at a printing house in Nancy at the age of 15 and through his teenage years, then he entered L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1913. The L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts was founded in Paris by a minister of Louis XIV, Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1671, as a school of fine arts. It provides tuition in painting, sculpture and engraving for students selected through competitive examinations. He achieved great academic success at school. Later, he first entered the art world with the help of Eugène Vallin, a renowned furniture designer and architect, and Victor Prouvé, a sculptor, painter and engraver. He is the teacher of Bourgeois Louise, an installation artist.

Throughout his career, Colin adjusted the Art Deco style to his own distinctive style, evolving with his understanding of symbolism and abstraction. He excelled in the deceptively simple way in which he portrayed his work. Over his lifetime, he designed dozens of posters for performers in various media, reflecting the history of Parisian show business and the public life he led. His posters are highly stylised, concentrating on themes in the performing arts, dance, studio art and theatre. His bold imagery, strong clean lines and brilliant colours are a hallmark of his work and showcase his superb visual communication skills.Among these, his posters Revue Nègre and Tumulte Noir are internationally recognised for their vibrant colours and strong lines that bring out the extraordinary talent of these musicians and dancers.

The protagonist in Le Tumulte Noir is Josephine Baker. In 1925, 19-year-old Josephine Baker made her debut on stage at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, causing a sensation.

After the horrors of World War I, a fascination with Africa and a frenzy of American jazz swept through Paris, and "black juggling" was very popular. Using this enthusiasm, the young Baker was invited from New York to star in La Revue Nègre. Her debut was a huge success and was soon invited by Folies Bergère, where her signature performance was a dance in which she wore only a banana band.^[5] The other prints in the series show a variety of performers from the Satire, including a double sheet effect depicting an orchestra performing against an Art Deco cityscape and Parisians dancing the Charleston in ecstasy.

Le Tumulte Noir was painted on stone and then hand coloured using a popular and time-consuming technique known at the time as pochoir. This process involved applying individual stencils and special bristle pom-poms for each colour. Le Tumulte Noir is a remarkable achievement in Art Deco and graphic design, a style that takes its name from the 1925 Exposition of Decorative Arts in Paris. The collection also features elements influenced by artists such as the Cubist painter Fernand Léger and the Mexican-born artist Miguel Covarrubias.

Le Tumulte Noir celebrates the spirit of unfettered expression that Josephine Baker displayed throughout her extraordinary career. Showcasing Paul Colin's tribute to the great African-American artists that brought the Jazz Age to Paris, it celebrates not only Josephine Baker, but also the love of Charleston and jazz in France, and the huge impact these artists had on French popular culture in the 1920s.

This poster, which kicked off the careers of Josephine Baker and Paul Colin, is one of the finest works of decorative art in the medium and has had a huge impact in the field of poster art. This poster shows Josephine Baker in a tight white dress, fists on hips and short hair slicked back, appearing between two black men, one wearing a hat tilted over his eyes and a plaid bow tie, the other with a broad smile. This work is one of the greatest successes of Art Deco, as the cubist distortion admirably renders the rhythm of jazz, which was new in France at the time.

Revue Nègre was an important event in the life of wartime Paris. It led to the discovery of jazz, to the invasion of colourful madness and to the Charleston becoming the most fashionable dance in Paris. It created the glory of both Josephine Baker and Paul Colin. Paul Colin did his first masterpiece with impressive aplomb, a work in which there are only two basic colours, red and black, and which shows two caricatures of black people with eyes like billiard balls, and behind them the swinging Miss Baker. The well-distributed lettering is also clear and modern. It is an extremely simple yet fresh and joyful piece. It is a perfect invitation to the concert hall and, as a trial run, it is a masterful brushstroke.

In 1923, Paul Colin met André Daven, the new director of the Champs-Elysées theatre, who was seeking talent and new shows. Colin designed his first poster for the film Imaginary Journey Voyage two years later, and in the meantime, he began work for Josephine Baker in the same year. Colin captured the Jazz Age in Paris in his work for Le Tumulte Noir. It was the poster that launched him to fame, and he created other works in his signature style. He then designed theatre and film sets, which made him famous throughout Paris. Paul Colin founded his poster school in 1930, which trained many talented designers for the future. Paul Colin worked until the 1970s. For more than 40 years, he worked in theater, creating nearly 2,000 posters and hundreds of stage sets.

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Freda Josephine Baker (née McDonald; June 3, 1906 - April 12, 1975), naturalized as Joséphine Baker, was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France. She was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant.

During her early career, Baker was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in its 1927 revue Un vent de folie caused a sensation in the city. Her costume, consisting only of a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.

Baker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the "Black Venus", the "Black Pearl", the "Bronze Venus", and the "Creole Goddess". Born in St. Louis, Missouri, she renounced her U.S. citizenship and became a French national after her marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. She raised her children in France.

Baker aided the French Resistance during World War II. After the war, she was awarded the Resistance Medal by the French Committee of National Liberation, the Croix de Guerre by the French military, and was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour by General Charles de Gaulle. Baker sang: "I have two loves: my country and Paris."

Baker, who refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States, is noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement. In 1968, she was offered unofficial leadership in the movement in the United States by Coretta Scott King, following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. After thinking it over, Baker declined the offer out of concern for the welfare of her children.

On November 30, 2021, Baker was inducted into the Panthéon in Paris, the first black woman to receive one of the highest honors in France. As her resting place remains in Monaco Cemetery, a cenotaph was installed in vault 13 of the crypt in the Panthéon.

Baker's unrelenting badgering of a local show manager led to her recruitment for the St. Louis Chorus vaudeville act. At the age of 13, she headed to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance and performed at the Plantation Club, Florence Mills's old stomping ground. After several auditions, she secured a role in the chorus line of a touring production of the groundbreaking and hugely successful Broadway revue "Shuffle Along" (1921) that helped bring public attention to Florence Mills, Paul Robeson, and Adelaide Hall.

In "Shuffle Along", Baker was a dancer at the end of a chorus line. Fearing she might be overshadowed by the others, she used her position to introduce a hint of comedy into her routine, making her stand out from her fellow dancers. She began in "Shuffle Along" with one of the U.S. touring companies, but, once she came of age, she was transferred to the Broadway production, where she remained for several months, until the show closed, in 1923. Next, Baker was cast in "The Chocolate Dandies", a revue that opened on September 1, 1924. Again, she was relegated to the chorus line. The show ran for 96 performances, finally closing in November 1925.

Baker sailed to Paris in 1925 and opened on October 2 in "la Revue nègre [fr]" at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. She was 19 at the time. In a 1974 interview with The Guardian, she explained that her first big break came in this bustling European city. "No, I didn't get my first break on Broadway. I was only in the chorus in 'Shuffle Along' and 'Chocolate Dandies.' I became famous first in France in the twenties. I just couldn't stand America and I was one of the first coloured Americans to move to Paris. Oh yes, Bricktop was there as well. Me and her were the only two, and we had a marvellous time. Of course, everyone who was anyone knew Bricky. And they got to know Miss Baker as well."

In Paris, she became an instant success for her erotic dancing and for appearing practically nude onstage. After a successful tour of Europe, she broke her contract and returned to France in 1926 to star at the Folies Bergère, setting the standard for her future acts.

Baker performed the Danse Sauvage, wearing little more than a skirt of strung-together artificial bananas. Her success coincided with the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, which gave birth to the term "Art Deco", as well as a renewed interest in non-Western art forms, including those of African origin, which Baker would represent. In later shows in Paris, she was often accompanied on stage by her pet cheetah, "Chiquita", donning a diamond collar. Chiquita frequently escaped into the orchestra pit, terrorizing the musicians and adding another element of excitement to the show.

After a while, Baker became the most successful American entertainer in France. Ernest Hemingway called her "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw." The author spent hours talking with her in Parisian bars. Picasso depicted her alluring beauty. Jean Cocteau became friendly with her and helped vault her to international stardom. Baker endorsed a "Bakerfix" hair gel, as well as bananas, shoes, and cosmetics, among other products.

In 1929, Baker became the first African-American star to visit Yugoslavia, which she included on a tour through Central Europe via the Orient Express. In Belgrade, she performed at Luxor Balkanska, then the city's most luxurious venue. In a nod to local culture, she included a Pirot kilim in her routine, and donated some of the show's proceeds to poor children of Serbia. In Zagreb, adoring crowds greeted her at the train station, but opposition from local clergy and morality police led to the cancellation of some of her shows.

During her travels in Yugoslavia, Baker was accompanied by "Count" Giuseppe Pepito Abatino. At the start of her career in France, Abatino, a Sicilian former stonemason who passed himself off as a count, persuaded her to let him manage her. He became not only Baker's manager, but her lover as well. The two could not marry because she was not yet divorced from her second husband, Willie Baker.

During this period, she released her most successful song, "J'ai deux amours" (1931). The song expresses the sentiment that "I have two loves, my country and Paris." In a 2007 book, Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street claimed that "by the 1930's, Baker's assimilation into French popular culture had been completed by her association with the song." She starred in four films, which found success only in Europe: the silent film Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934) and Princesse Tam Tam (1935). She starred in Fausse Alerte in 1940. Bergfelder, Harris, and Street wrote that the silent film Siren of the Tropics "rehearses the 'primitive-to-Parisienne' narrative that would become the staple of Baker's cinema career, and exploited in particular her comic stage persona based on loose-limbed athleticism and artful clumsiness." The sound films "Zouzou" (1934) and "Princesse Tam Tam" were both star vehicles for Baker.

Under the management of Abatino, Baker's stage and public persona, as well as her singing voice, were transformed. In 1934, she took the lead in a revival of Jacques Offenbach's opera La créole, which premiered in December of that year for a six-month run at the Théâtre Marigny on the Champs-Élysées of Paris. In preparation for her performances, she went through months of training with a vocal coach. In the words of Shirley Bassey, who has cited Baker as her primary influence, "... she went from a petite danseuse sauvage with a decent voice to la grande diva magnifique... I swear in all my life I have never seen, and probably never shall see again, such a spectacular singer and performer."

Despite her popularity in France, Baker never attained the equivalent reputation in America. Her star turn in a 1936 revival of "Ziegfeld Follies" on Broadway was not commercially successful, and later in the run she was replaced by Gypsy Rose Lee. "Time" magazine referred to her as a "Negro wench ... whose dancing and singing might be topped anywhere outside of Paris", while other critics said her voice was "too thin" and "dwarf-like" to fill the Winter Garden Theatre. She returned to Europe heartbroken. This contributed to Baker's becoming a legal citizen of France and giving up her American citizenship.

Baker returned to Paris in 1937, married the French industrialist Jean Lion, and became a French citizen. They were married in the French town of Crèvecœur-le-Grand, in a wedding presided over by the mayor, Jammy Schmidt.

Between 1933 and 1937, Baker was a guest at the start of the Tour de France on four occasions.