Elizabeth Colomba

• Birthplace — Èpinay-sur-Seine, France • Known for — Historical paintings and portraits of black subjects • Education — École des Beaux-Arts • Notable Works — Laure (Portrait of a Negresse) (2018) • Website — elizabeth-colomba.com

Colomba was born in Épinay-sur-Seine, where her parents had immigrated to from Martinique. As a child, she told her mother she wanted to become a painter after learning about Picasso. She began painting early, making watercolors as a child to decorate her parents' Caribbean restaurant. As a teenager, she read The Image of the Black in Western Art by John and Dominique de Menil, which inspired her to paint a portrait of her great-grandmother in the style of Whistler’s Mother. She continued to study the paintings of Louvre, especially the Dutch masters, and attended the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1998, she moved to Los Angeles and worked in storyboarding and illustration for the film industry.

Colomba started spending time in New York in 2007 to further her painting career, and moved to the city permanently in 2011. She met artist Deborah Willis in 2010 after Willis saw one of her paintings at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, and Willis helped her enter the New York art world. Her work focuses on black figures from history, especially black women. Her subjects have included Biddy Mason, Laure, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and Harriet P. Jacobs. In 2016, she had a solo exhibition of works at the Long Gallery in Harlem, which The New Yorker described as "opulent portraits of black women [that] redress the erasures of women of color in nineteenth-century art history." In March 2022, her first solo museum show opened at Princeton University. Her solo show "Mythologies," which included oil paintings, works on paper, and her short film Cendrillon, opened at the Portland Museum of Art in 2023.

• In 2018, the Metropolitan Opera's streaming series premiered Colomba's short film Cendrillon, starring Grace Bol. • Colomba illustrated the 2021 graphic novel Queenie, the Godmother of Harlem, about Stéphanie St. Clair • 157 Years of Juneteenth, a watercolor for a New Yorker cover celebrating Juneteenth