Pompidou Centre show featuring 150 artists of African heritage is the last before the gallery shuts for five years

For many black artists and intellectuals, postwar Paris was a cosmopolitan hub. While colonisation, racism and segregation cast a shadow over their countries of origin, the City of Light appeared then a more liberated place where they were free to mix, study, work and create.

Now, a new exhibition – the last major event at Paris’s Pompidou Centre before it closes for a five-year renovation in September – explores the “unrecognised and fundamental” contribution these artists made to the French capital and how it influenced them.