Serge Hélénon | The Black-Caribbean School by Aicon

SERGE HÉLÉNON THE BLACK-CARIBBEAN SCHOOL Curated by Joshua I. Cohen

AICON | 35 GREAT JONES ST | NEW YORK, NY 10012

“Serge Hélénon: The Black-Caribbean School” by Joshua I. Cohen Images About Serge Hélénon

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SERGE HÉLÉNON The Black-Caribbean School Joshua I. Cohen

Serge Hélénon (b. 1934, Fort-de-France) forged his artistic practice between Martinique, France, Mali, and Ivory Coast during the second half of the 20th century. The artist’s overall trajectory might be outlined as one evolving from figuration to abstraction, with an especially dramatic moment of transformation occurring in the early-to-mid 1960s. Hélénon, however, describes the early arc of his career as a spiraling process wherein he absorbed, adapted, and discarded first academic Beaux-Arts training, then folkloric representational strategies, then historical avant-garde styles, before arriving at the more inquisitive and opaque modality of “une figuration Autre”—“an Other figuration.”1 Hélénon’s oeuvre emerges as significant within a global art world and intellectual community whose attention has turned increasingly toward transatlantic histories and postcolonial theoretical interventions. Figures featuring prominently within these discourses include major thinkers from Martinique, such as Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), Édouard Glissant (1928-2011), and Patrick Chamoiseau (b. 1953), among others. Hélénon’s paintings, assemblages, prints, and other works demand to be situated within this intellectual and creative landscape, as well as in relation to broader histories of modernism and postwar abstraction. The artist’s body of work can also be understood as a critical engagement with Negritude, a Francophone diasporic modernist movement that originated in Paris in the 1920s and ’30s before gaining wider visibility following World War II.2 In the late 1960s, Hélénon began to frame his art as belonging to what he called the École Négro-Caraïbe, or Black-Caribbean School.3 The name of this “school” refers neither to a formalized artistic movement nor to an institution of fine-arts education. Rather it designates Hélénon’s individual output in dialogue with several likeminded Martinican artists of his generation— notably Louis Laouchez (1934-2016)—who lived and worked, as he did, in Francophone West Africa during the immediate post-independence decades.4 *** Several overlapping crises jolted Hélénon’s childhood: his father’s sudden death in 1939; the constraints of life under colonialism; and the outbreak of World War II, which intensified the colonial conditions by bringing Martinique under Vichy rule.5 Despite these circumstances, Hélénon set his sights on becoming an artist, partly out of a wish to maintain a connection to the memory of his father, who had been a master engraver.6 From 1949 through 1953, Hélénon attended the École des Arts Appliqués de Fort-de-France, an applied-arts school geared toward preparing students for careers in skilled crafts and industry. The school also offered some studio-art training, notably in painting, where the landscape genre reigned supreme in Martinique at that time.7 In October 1953, the French government awarded Hélénon a scholarship loan (prêt d’honneur) to attend the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Nice. During his time as a student in Nice (1954-58), Hélénon chose advertising as his area of specialization, and his extracurricular life centered on his involvement with the local Black Students’ Association.8 Through this organization, Hélénon—along with fellow Martinican art students Louis

Laouchez, Mathieu-Jean Gensin, and Robert Mazarin—became close friends with a number of African students, including the Ivorian intellectual Harris Memel-Fotê (19302008). They all played together in a dance orchestra performing popular Caribbean music.9 Works on paper from Hélénon’s years in Nice, as well as another year spent teaching art in Toulon (1958-59), reflect his early orientation toward the bold visual language of poster design, alongside a quest for self-realization and a passion for Caribbean music. By 1959, Hélénon was married with a two-year-old daughter, and was realizing he had little interest in a career in advertising, which would have required moving to Paris. He chose instead to apply to France’s newly formed Ministère de la Coopération to serve as a drawing instructor in Bamako, the capital city of the newly independent country of Mali (formerly French Soudan). Based in Bamako over the next decade (1960-70), he taught at several local educational institutions, and he set to work as a studio artist.10 Hélénon’s paintings of the early 1960s attest to a process of restless exploration and rapid transformation, in dialogue with historical European avant-garde movements on the one hand, and the material culture and urban life he encountered in Bamako on the other. The folkloric style of In Bamako (1960), which echoes the artist’s preoccupations over the previous years, gives way to efforts to engage with his surroundings through empirical observation, as seen in the relatively naturalism of The Riverside in Bamako (1961). Hélénon subsequently turned inward, and toward the interior genre of still-life. He borrowed from Post-Impressionism and Cubism to represent arrangements of assorted objects—a Bamana figural sculpture, fruit, skulls, etc.—in stylistic modes that flirted increasingly with abstraction. The artist made similar forays into abstraction in some of his figural and landscape compositions of 1963. Yet he soon dispensed altogether with genre as he settled into the more radical visual language of paintings like Untitled (1963), Drum (1964), and Untitled (1965). From this point on, the titles of Hélénon works—if they bear titles at all— make reference not to identifiable locations or subjects, but to the formal qualities and functions of the artworks themselves, or to general concepts, qualities, or emotions. In the late 1960s, just prior to and following his move to Abidjan in 1970, Hélénon synthesized painting, collage, and assemblage. This activity coincided with the invention of a new artistic category within his oeuvre: Expressions-Bidonville (Shantytown-Expressions). Through the Expressions-Bidonville, Hélénon distanced himself from canvas—the classic support of Western easel painting—and shifted toward painting on wood, which he cited as foundational to African and Afro-diasporic sculptural traditions.11 The Expressions-Bidonville also made use of locally recuperated or “found” elements—including scrap wood from construction sites, cardboard and Styrofoam packaging, and everyday materials such as sawdust, string, and clay—and combined them all using paint and various adhesives.12 Abidjan’s urban environment, where Hélénon procured many of these materials, was marked by the presence of shantytowns, paralleling neighborhoods of similarly improvised dwellings in Fort-de-France, often populated by newly arrived migrants to the city. For Hélénon, shantytowns in Abidjan, Fort-de-France, and elsewhere exemplified an important yet often overlooked aspect of African and diasporic life characterized by migration, bricolage, and a fierce will to survive in the face of racism, poverty, and oppression. Encapsulating his use of assemblage to valorize discarded materials alongside marginalized peoples and histories, Hélénon coined a personal proverb: “Rien n’est pas rien, alors plutôt rien que pas du tout” (“Nothing is not nothing, so better nothing than not at all”). During the 1970s and early ’80s, Hélénon taught painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) in Abidjan. Working with painting students from Ivory Coast and elsewhere, Hélénon avoided classical fine-arts pedagogy, and urged explorations of local, sometimes unorthodox materials in the production of non-figurative art. Hélénon became influential among a group of young Ivorian painters whose uncon-

ventional techniques were initially derided by fellow students as “vohou”—a Guro-language word connoting trash, ritual elements, or “anything goes.”13 These young painters— including Kra Nguessan, Youssouf Bath, Yacouba Touré, Théodore Koudougnon, Ernestine Meledge, Mathilde Moreau, and others—eventually chose to own the insult, and fashioned themselves as embodying a new “spirit” in Ivorian art, which they named Vohou-Vohou.14 Hélénon’s lasting contribution in Abidjan consisted of offering inspiration to a new current in Ivorian art, while at the same time establishing his own collaborative practice by way of the Black-Caribbean School, which held exhibitions in Abidjan, the Côte d’Azur, Fort-deFrance, and Paris throughout these years.15 Relocating to Nice from Abidjan in 1984, Hélénon rented the private atelier where he still works today and embarked on another highly productive phase. The decision to retire from teaching, made shortly after his return to France, allowed him to devote himself fulltime to studio practice. A longterm contract with the print gallery Vision Nouvelle led to more work in printmaking than he had done previously, even as he continued to make paintings and assemblages. Regardless of the chosen format, Hélénon’s art in the 1980s and ‘90s remained grounded in what he called “a new figuration born of gesture” (“une nouvelle figuration née du geste”).16 His approach, as he accounts for it, obliterated any trace of folklore or exoticism.17 “New figuration” permitted him to record his own physical creative actions—a method indexing presence without relying on representation. The geste—or gesture, at once concept and act—articulates the unity and difference of Hélénon’s belonging to a global, culturally disparate, and historically fractured community of African-descended peoples. As Hélénon recalled in 1991 of his participation in the Black Students’ Association in Nice in the 1950s: “There were Africans from Côte d’Ivoire, from Dahomey, from Togo, and from Mali. In their bodily movements [gestes] and their deportment, nothing was foreign to me, but their difference remained perceptible. And I understood that I wasn’t really living African culture, and that for them I remained a foreigner.”18 Conversely, the geste constitutes something so unique as to fulfill “the need for a personal handwriting or style” (“le besoin d’une écriture personnelle”).19 Hélénon’s personal style, always both figural and abstract, reflects his own unmistakable facture in juxtaposition with manufactured elements culled from his immediate surroundings. Hélénon’s art in this way speaks at a level so individual as to undermine fixed identity categories, while at the same time expressing, even if not without tensions, his quest for (self-)discovery as an artist of diaspora.

Endnotes 1 Serge Hélénon, personal interview with the author, Nice, June 29, 2022. 2 Some landmark contributions to the recent literature on Negritude include: T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Negritude Women (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003); Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Souleymane Bachir Diagne, African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude, trans. Chike Jeffers (London; New York: Seagull Books, 2011); and Abiola Irele, The Negritude Moment: Explorations in Francophone African and Caribbean Literature and Thought (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2011). 3 I translate the French word “négro” as “black” for reasons outlined in Joshua I. Cohen, “Note on Terms,” in The “Black Art” Renaissance: African Sculpture and Modernism across Continents (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020), xix-xx. For extensive consideration of these terms and translation issues, see Grégory Pierrot, “Nègre (Noir, Black, Renoi, Négro),” Small Axe 26, no. 2 (July 2022): 100-07. 4 On the artist Louis Laouchez, see especially Louis Laouchez (Paris: HC Éditions, 2009). 5 Serge Hélénon, personal interview with the author, Nice, October 20, 2022. “Serge Hélénon and André Parinaud, “Entretien avec Serge Hélénon par André Parinaud,” in Hélénon (Paris: Vision Nouvelle, 1991), 138. Armand Nicolas, Histoire de la Martinique. De 1939 à 1971. Tome 3 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998), 9-81. 6 Serge Hélénon, personal interview with the author, Nice, June 29, 2022. Alain Baudemont, Hélénon: peintures, gravures, expressions bidonville (Paris: Vision Nouvelle, 1985), 5. 7 Founded in 1943, the École des Arts Appliqués became Collège Technique des Arts Appliqués in 1951. For a broader history of modern art in Martinique, see Gerry L’Étang and Renée-Paule Yung-Ying, eds. La Peinture en Martinique (Paris: HC Éditions, 2007). 8 Hélénon and Parinaud, “Entretien avec Serge Hélénon,” 142. 9 Serge Hélénon, personal interviews with the author, Nice, October 20 and 22, 2022. 10 Serge Hélénon, personal interview with the author, Nice, June 29, 2022. Dossiers nominatifs des personnels 1952-1989, Bamako (mission puis service de coopération et d’action culturelle), 64PO/2/20, Centre d’Archives Diplomatiqiues de Nantes (CADN). “Aperçu biographique,” in Hélénon: “Lieux de peinture” (Paris: HC Éditions, 2006), 14. 11 Hélénon and Parinaud, “Entretien avec Serge Hélénon,” 154. 12 Hélénon and Parinaud, “Entretien avec Serge Hélénon,” 156. 13 Marie-Hélène Boisdur de Toffol, “The Black Caribbean School and the Vohou-Vohou Movement,” in An Anthology of African Art: The Twentieth Century, ed. N’Goné Fall and Jean Loup Pivin (New York: Distributed Art Publishers; Paris: Revue Noire Éditions, 2002), 238-41. Yacouba Konaté, “Art and Social Dynamics in Côte d’Ivoire: The Position of Vohou-Vohou,” in A Companion to Modern African Art, ed. Monica Blackmun Visonà and Gitti Salami (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 371-88. 14 See “The Vohou Revolution (1985),” in Why Are We ‘’Artists’? 100 World Art Manifestos, ed. Jessica Lack (New York: Penguin, 2017), 382-84. 15 Early exhibitions of the Black-Caribbean School took place as follows: Centre Cultural Français, Abidjan, April 3-18, 1970; Galerie Hervieu, Villefranche-sur-Mer, July 27-August 31, 1973; Hôtel Ivoire, Abidjan, April 22-May 2, 1974; Foyer de Bellevue, Centre Martiniquais d’Animation Culturelle (CMAC), Fort-de-France, December 22, 1975 to January 4, 1976; Hôtel du Grand Orient de France, Paris, May 1982; and Galerie Zoé Cutzarida, Paris, September-October 1982. For the artist’s account of the origins and purpose of the “school,” see Dominique Berthet and Serge Hélénon, “Vivre l’assemblage de l’intérieure” [1999], in Hélénon: “Lieux de peinture” (Paris: HC Éditions, 2006), 181-82. 16 Serge Hélénon, untitled statement in Peintres Négro-Caraïbes: Serge Hélénon, Louis Laouchez (Villefranche-surMer: Galerie Hervieu, 1973), np. 17 Virginie Andriamirado, Serge Hélénon, and Alexandre Mensah, “‘Le premier espace de souveraineté à gagner est celui de la culture’: Entretien de Alexandre Mensah et Virginie Andriamirado avec Serge Hélénon à propos de l’exposition Les bois sacrés d’Hélénon au Musée Dapper,” Africultures (October 31, 2002), http://africultures.com/le-premier-espacede-souverainete-a-gagner-est-celui-de-la-culture-2633/, accessed November 13, 2023. 18 “Étudiant à Nice de 54 à 58, j’ai fréquenté une Association d’étudiants noirs africains. C’est par eux que j’ai connu l’Afrique. Dans cette Association, j’avais établi des amitiés et le désir d’aller en Afrique s’est imposé. ¶ Il y avait des Africains de Côte d’Ivoire, du Dahomey, du Togo et du Mali. Dans leurs gestes et leurs comportements, rien ne m’était étranger, mais leur différence restait sensible. Et j’ai compris que je ne vivais pas réellement la culture africaine et que pour eux je restais un étranger.” Hélénon and Parinaud, “Entretien avec Serge Hélénon,” 142. 19 Serge Hélénon, personal interview with the author, Nice, June 29, 2022.

Dans toute la France, du 17 mars au 11 octobre: 7e Championnat national des routiers, 1957 Gouache on paper, 10.63 x 7.87 in (27 x 20 cm)

Martini, 1957 Gouache on paper, 15.75 x 11.8 in (40 x 30 cm)

Rendez-vous des nations, France, Côte d’Azur, 1957 Gouache on paper, 15.75 x 11.81 in (40 x 30 cm)

Dansons avec la sonora matancera, 1957-58 Gouache on paper, 12.2 x 12.2 in (31 x 31 cm)

Sans titre (jouer de tam-tam), 1957-58 Gouache on paper, 6.69 x 5.51 in (17 x 14 cm)

Neg-Bwa, 1958 Gouache and pastel on paper, 3.94 x 5.12 in (10 x 13 cm)

Sans titre (autoportrait), 1958 Gouache on paper, 18.5 x 9.45 in (47 x 24 cm)

Sans titre (autoportrait), 1959 Colored pencil on paper, 13 x 9.84 in (33 x 25 cm)

À Bamako, 1960 Gouache on paper, 5.51 x 9.84 in (14 x 25 cm)

Le bord du fleuve à Bamako, 1961 Oil on canvas, 25.59 x 36.22 in (65 x 92 cm)

Nature morte, 1961 Oil on canvas, 21.12 x 28.74 in (60 x 73 cm)

Nature morte, intérieure, 1961 Oil on canvas, 36.22 x 25.39 in (92 x 64.5 cm)

Crâne de boeuf, 1962 Oil on canvas, 28.74 x 39.37 in (73 x 100 cm)

Crâne, 1962 Oil on canvas, 25.59 x 31.89 in (65 x 81 cm)

Sans titre, 1963 Oil on canvas, 23.62 x 19.69 in (60 x 50 cm)

Sans titre, 1966 Oil on canvas, 39.37 x 39.37 (100 x 100 cm)

Métissage culturel, 1968-69 Oil on canvas, 39.37 x 39.37 in (100 x 100 cm)

Tam tam, 1964 Oil on canvas, 36.22 x 28.74 in (92 x 73 cm)

Queue de vidé (défoulement collectif), 1965 Oil on canvas, 21.26 x 28.74 in (54 x 73 cm)

Paysage de brousse, 1963 Oil on canvas, 21.26 x 25.49 in (54 x 64.75 cm)

Groupe, 1963 Oil on canvas, 28.74 x 39.37 in (73 x 100 cm)

Sans titre, 1965 Pastel on paper, 12.6 x 7.87 in (32 x 20 cm)

Nécessité intérieure (Expression-Bidonville), 1971-72 Cardboard and paint assemblage on wood, 25 x 26.77 in (63.5 x 68 cm)

Personnage en tunique, 1974 Oil and collage on canvas, 39.37 x 37.4 in (100 x 95 cm)

Pour mémoire (Expression-Bidonville), 1984 Booklet on painted wood, 33.86 x 27.56 in (86 x 70 cm)

Douce euphorie, 1973 Oil on canvas, 36.22 x 28.74 in (92 x 73 cm)

En pleine latérite, 1971 Oil on canvas, 39.37 x 25.59 in (100 x 65 cm)

Personnage en tunique, 1969 Acrylic paint, bogolan fabric, clay on canvas, 31.5 x 27.56 in (80 x 70 cm)

Douvan déyé (Expression-Bidonville), 1979 Mixed media and wood on canvas, with pedestal 51.38 x 23.62 x 15.75 in (130.5 x 60 x 40 cm)

Sans titre (Expression-Bidonville), 1982 Mixed media on wood, 20.67 x 7.09 x 6.7 in (52.5 x 18 x 17 cm)

Sans titre (Expression-Bidonville), 1982 Mixed media on wood, 20.87 x 7.68 x 7.86 in (53 x 19.5 x 20 cm)

Mass morphologique, 1973 Oil on canvas, 39.37 x 37.4 in (100 x 95 cm)

Reliefs, 1977 Mixed media and collage on canvas, 31.5 x 29.53 in (80 x 75 cm)

Voie sacrée, 1990 Mixed media and folded paper on canvas, 42.52 x 31.5 in (108 x 80 cm)

Silhouette, 1990 Carborundum engraving, 29.92 x 22.64 in (76 x 57.5 cm)

Souvenir de brousse, 1992 Carborundum engraving, 29.53 x 22.83 in (75 x 58 cm)

Sans titre, 1995-98 Carborundum engraving, 29.53 x 22.05 in (75 x 56 cm)

Fécondité, 1990 Carborundum engraving, 29.53 x 22.64 in (75 x 57.5 cm)

Sans titre, 1995-98 Carborundum engraving, 29.72 x 22.44 in (75.5 x 57 cm)

100

Sans titre, 1995-98 Carborundum engraving, 29.53 x 22.44 in (75 x 57 cm)

101

Songe, 1990 Carborundum engraving, 35.83 x 25 in (91 x 63.5 cm)

102

103

Élévation, 1989 Carborundum engraving, 48.62 x 32.28 in (123.5 x 82 cm)

104

105

Sans titre, 1980-84 Carborundum engraving, 39.76 x 25.79 in (101 x 65.5 cm)

106

107

Serge Hélénon Serge Hélénon (b. 1934, Fort-de-France, Martinique) took part in his first exhibition in 1960 at the Salon de la Marine in Toulon. His premier solo exhibition opened in 1962 in Bamako, Mali, where he was working as an art teacher. In November 1970, the first historic exhibition of the École Négro-Caraïbe was presented at the French cultural center in Abidjan. Hélénon showed in group and solo exhibitions in Africa, France, and Martinique through the 1980s, ’90s, and early 2000s, including a show with Patrick Chamoiseau at the Musée Dapper in Paris in 2002. In 2006, Editions HC published a monograph of Hélénon’s work with text by Dominique Berthet and an introduction by Édouard Glissant. Hélénon lives and works in Nice, France. EDUCATION École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs, Nice, France École des Arts Appliqués, Martinique SELECTED SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS 2023-24

The Black-Caribbean School, curated by Joshua I. Cohen, Aicon, New York

2022-23

Hélénon: Palette palimpseste, Fondation Clément, Le François, Martinique

2013

Gallery Art Veritas, Göteborg, Sweden

2012

Chapelle Saint-Elme, Musée de la Citadelle, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

2012

Hélénon: Seuils, portes et passages, Galerie Le Hangart, Draguignan, France

2010

Serge Hélénon: Repères, Fondation Clément, Le François, Martinique

2005

Galerie André Arsenec, CMAC Scène nationale, l’Atrium, Fort-de-France, Martinique

2003

Château-musée Grimaldi, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France Galerie nationale Bab Rouah, Rabat, Morocco

2002

Les bois sacrés d’Hélénon, Musée Dapper, Paris, France

2001

Galerie du Luxembourg, Luxembourg Galerie Esprit, Clinge, Netherlands Galerie de Verbeelding, Baarle-Nassau, Netherlands

2000

Forum Animation, Chambéry, France

1998

Galerie Esprit, Clinge, Netherlands Galerie du square Louvois, Paris, France

1997

Pawol-Papier, Artothèque Sud, Nîmes, France

1995

Galleri Nordstrand, Oslo, Norway Galerie Esprit, Clinge, Netherlands

1994

Remp’Arts, municipal contemporary art gallery, Toulon, France Galerie Suzel Berna, Paris, France Galerie Mireille Mercier-Münch, Nice, France 108

1993

Galerie Lacan, Strasbourg, France Galerie Pierre Vasse, Lille, France

1992

Galerie Wagner, Thionville Galleri Nordstrand, Oslo, Norway

1991

Ostermäln, Stockholm, Sweden Galerie Pelin, Helsinki, Finland Galerie de l’Europe, Nice, France, reportage FR3 Galerie Ducastel, Avignon, France Galerie Kiliansmühle, Lünen, Germany

1990

Galerie L’Ami des lettres, Bordeaux, France Galerie Carinthia, Klagenfurt, Vienna, Austria Galerie Goyert, Cologne, Germany Galerie Aktuarius, Strasbourg, France Galerie Méduane, Laval, France Galerie Lafrache, Cannes, France Galerie Couleurs du Temps, Geneva, Switzerland

1989

Galleri Nordsrand, Oslo, Norway

Galerie Pierre Vasse, Lille, France

Kimzey Miller Gallery, Seattle, USA

1988

Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland

1987

Art Jonction, Galerie Fersen (Antibes), Nice, France

1986

Palais de l’Europe, Menton, France

Galerie Ducastel, Avignon, France

1984

Galerie Akagni (Maine Durieu), Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Galerie Ducastel, Aivgnon, France

1982

Galerie Athisma, Lyon, France

Centre Culturel Jacques Aka, Bouaké, Ivory Coast

1980

Galerie Mitkal, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

1970

Franska-Galleriet, Malmö, Sweden

1967

France-Senegal Cultural Exchange, Dakar, Senegal

1962-65

France-Mali Cultural Exchange, Bamako, Mali

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2017

Le parti pris du bâti : Martin Miguel, Serge Hélénon, Château Lescombes, Centre d’Art Contemporain Eysines, Bordeaux, France

2016

Liberté 36, traveling exhibition, France 109

2011

OMA : outre-mer art contemporain, L’Orangerie du Sénat, Paris, France

2004

M2A2, Salon d’Automne, Paris, France

2000

École Négro-Caraïbe, Galerie Bellint, Paris, France

1999

Sharjah Biennial, UAE

M2A2, preview exhibition for Musée Martiniquais des arts des Amériques, Paris, France 1998

Palais de l’Europe, Menton, France

Rites, Grande Halle de la Villette, Paris, France The Caribbean, 30th International Painting Festival, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France 1997

Modern Art of Africa, Galerie Am Domplatz, Münster, Germany

Salon Coup de Cœur, Espace Cardin, Paris, France

35 Years of Galerie Ducastel, Avignon, France

1996

Fiftieth Anniversary of UNAM, Nice, France

1995

Creole Genius, Galerie le Monde de l’art, Paris, France

Indigo, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe 1994

Indigo, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe

1992

13th Salon of Original Engravings, Bayeux, France

A New Regard for the Caribbean, Espace Carpeaux, Courbevoie, France Caribbean Travelling Exhibition, Saint-Domingue, Trinidad, Guadeloupe, Porto Rico, Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Curaçao Dak’Art 92, Dakar International Biennial, Senegal 1991

Kimzey Miller Gallery, Seattle, USA

Havana Biennial, Cuba

1990

SAGA, Grand Palais, Paris, France

Galerie Broglin, Colmar, France

École Négro-Caraïbe, Galerie Maine Durieu, Paris, France

Vision Nouvelle, travelling exhibition, Japan

Kimzey Miller Gallery, Seattle, USA

1989

Salon du Livre et de l’Estampe, Frankfurt, Germany

1987

L’Abstraction depuis 1950, Galerie Agora, Marseille, France

Art-Expo, New York & Los Angeles, USA Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland

1986

Salon International de l’Estampe, Mont-de-Marsan, France

40th Anniversary of UNAM, Galerie des Pouchettes, Nice, France Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland 1984

Second Salon National of Art Galleries, Montreal, Canada

110

Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland 1983

Black Magic, Galerie Jazzonia, Detroit, USA First Salon National of Art Galleries, Montreal, Canada Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland

1982

École Négro-Caraïbe, Galerie Akagni, Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Grand-Orient de France, Paris, France; Galerie Zoé Cutzarida, Paris, France Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland 12th Salon of Original Engravings, Bayeux, France

1981

Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland

1980

30 Years of Young Mediterranean Painters, Nice, France Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland 11th Salon of Original Engravings, Bayeux, France

1978

Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland

1977

Martinican Artists, Cincinnati and Atlanta, USA

1976

École Négro-Caraïbe, French Cultural Center, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

1975

École Négro-Caraïbe, CMAC, Fort-de-France, Martinique Art Basel, Galerie Hervieu, Switzerland

1972

Execution of a fresco (5.04 x 4.56 m) for President Hotel, Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast Boras Kunstmuseum (Galerie Hervieu), Sweden

1974

École Négro-Caraïbe, Hôtel Ivoire, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

1973

Peintres Négro-Caraïbes: Serge Hélénon, Louis Laouchez, Galerie Hervieu, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France

1970

École Négro-Caraïbe, French Cultural Center, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

1968

Salon de l’UNAM, Nice, France Boras Kunstmuseum (Galerie Hervieu), Sweden

1967-69

Franska Galleriet, School of Paris, Malmö, Sweden

1967

1st Barcelona Biennale, Barcelona, Spain 5e Biennale de Jeunes Artistes, Paris, France

1965

Salon de l’UNAM, Nice, France

1963

Galerie Paul Hervieu, Nice, France Salon de l’Union Méditerranéenne pour l’Art Moderne (UNAM), Nice, France

1960

Salon de la Marine, Toulon, France

1953

4th Salon of Martinican Artists, Fort-de-France, Martinique

1952

3rd Salon of Martinican Artists, Fort-de-France, Martinique

AWARDS

111

1984

Chevalier de L’Ordre National Ivoirien, Abidjan, Ivory Coast

1982

Médaille d’Or du Mérite et Dévouement Français

1980

Médaille de la ville de Nice, France

1973

Rotary-Club Prize, Nice, France

1960

Prix UNAM (Mediterranean Union for Modern Art), Nice, France

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, France Fonds national d’art contemporain (FNAC), Paris, France Fonds régional d’art contemporain, Martinique Musée Municipal de Menton, France United Nations, New York UNESCO, Paris

PUBLICATIONS Berthet, Dominique. «Serge Hélénon et l’École négro-caraïbe: une poétique de la rencontre.» Africultures 2-3, no. 92-93 (2013): 68-75. Glissant, Édouard, and Dominique Berthet. Hélénon, « Lieux de peinture ». Paris : HC Éditions, 2006. Parinaud, André, Daniel Radford, and Pierre Wicart. Hélénon. Paris: Vision Nouvelle, 1991. Baudemont, Alain. Hélénon: peintures, gravures, expressions bidonville. Paris: Vision Nouvelle, 1985. Mpoyi-Buatu, Théodore. «Deux peintres de l’école négro-caraïbe à Paris.» Présence Africaine 124, no. 4 (1982): 230-33. Bohbot, Michel. Hélénon. Vallauris: L’imprimerie Arnéra, 1979.

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Serge Hélénon | The Black-Caribbean School | Curated by Joshua I. Cohen Aicon, New York | December 7, 2023 - January 13, 2024 All works by the artist © Serge Hélénon Installation photography by Sebastian Bach

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