No one then suspects that this show will propel them both towards a celebrity that will quickly become international, and reveal both of them as outstanding figures of the Roaring Twenties, that extraordinary decade (1920-1930) that continues to fascinate us with its cheerfulness, its audacity, its modernity and its dazzling artistic vitality.

Freshly arrived from New York, Joséphine Baker was only 19 years old when she arrived in Paris to dance in La Revue Nègre. After a poor childhood in Saint Louis, Missouri, she left her family at a very young age to try her luck in the world of theater and dance. She went to New York during the Harlem Renaissance and managed to get hired as a chorus girl in Broadway music halls, including the very popular Shuffle Along (1921): it was there that she was noticed one day by Caroline Dudley Reagan, a friend of André Daven, artistic director of the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris.

Daven sought to give a second wind to his theater, which was then in difficulty, and at the suggestion of the cubist painter Fernand Léger, planned to hire an entirely Afro-American troupe for his next show. Caroline Dudley Reagan then hired eight backup singers - including Josephine Baker, who replaced the star (Ethel Waters) initially planned - and twelve musicians to stage La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. In September 1925, Joséphine Baker embarked for Paris with the rest of the troupe.

Paul Colin, too, had just been hired that fall by André Daven as set designer and poster designer for the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. Born in Nancy in 1895, he had studied painting and architecture there under the direction of Eugène Vallin, a representative of Art Nouveau. After having fought in the First World War, Colin returned to Paris and began working as a poster artist, notably for René Clair's Le Voyage Imaginaire in 1925. 
The meeting between the young dancer and the poster painter on the set of La Revue Nègre is a happy stroke of fate: it will give rise to both a passionate love affair - which will later turn into a long and faithful friendship - and a long and fruitful artistic collaboration, of which Josephine will be the muse, and which will inspire Paul Colin a series of brilliant posters, recognized as masterpieces of graphic art.

The following analysis is written for this blog by our faithful contributor, Michèle Druon, Professor Emeritus at California State University, Fullerton, where she taught French language, culture and literature* 
 
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LOT n°31 Paul Colin Paul COLIN (1892-1985) - Josephine Baker - Pochoir signé en bas à droite - 32,5 x 26,5 cm - Note : La rencontre entre la jeune danseuse Josephine Baker et le peintre-affichiste Paul Colin sur le plateau… Fiche détaillée