Wilson Barcelos Tibério

Wilson Barcelos Tibério was a painter and sculptor whose figurative artistic practice was closely connected with his anti-racist and anti-colonial activism. He engaged with key intellectual and cultural networks, including the Teatro Experimental do Negro in Rio de Janeiro during the 1940s, the journal Présence Africaine in Paris during the 1950s, and official institutions in newly independent African nations during the 1960s. Throughout his long artistic career, he contributed to shaping a transnational understanding of the Black experience that was grounded in a Pan-African sensibility.

Tibério began his artistic career in 1940 as an illustrator for newspapers in Rio de Janeiro. At the same time, he started exhibiting his drawings and paintings in group exhibitions across Brazil. Early mentions of his work in the press highlight his outspoken stance against racism in the country. This individual activism evolved into a collective initiative on October 13, 1944, when he joined fellow Black intellectuals—including Abdias Nascimento and Aguinaldo Camargo—to establish the Teatro Experimental do Negro (TEN), a theater company that united art, education, and political engagement.

The mid-1940s also marked a turning point in his career as a visual artist. Following his first solo exhibition in October 1945, sponsored by the Associação Brasileira de Imprensa, Tibério mounted another major solo presentation in December 1946 at the headquarters of the Ministério da Educação e Saúde. During this period, he revealed in several interviews his interest in visiting the African continent as a way of connecting with his ancestors. As he gained visibility through these early exhibitions, Tibério also forged the professional connections that enabled him to pursue this plan.

He traveled from Rio to Paris in 1947 and, following a brief stay in the French capital, continued on to French colonial territories in West Africa. In Dahomey (present-day Benin), he produced a series of paintings that represented local religious and secular practices and was also exposed to the violence perpetrated by colonial authorities. After openly protesting against the actions of these agents, in 1949 Tibério was deported to France.

Back in Paris, Tibério deepened his engagement with anti-colonial movements. Over the next decade, he became active within the intellectual network surrounding Présence Africaine,a bookstore, publishing house, and quarterly magazine founded in 1947 by writer Alioune Diop. It became a space of convergence for anti-colonial intellectuals and activists from across Africa and its diaspora. Also in Paris, Tibério participated in the Premier Congrès des Écrivains et Artistes Noirs (First Congress of Black Writers and Artists), a historic gathering organized by Présence Africaine that served as an inflection point for the mobilizations for African independence that followed. During the congress, Tibério connected with numerous influential figures from Africa and its diaspora, including Aimé Césaire, Cheikh Anta Diop, Frantz Fanon, and Léopold Senghor.

The independence movements ignited in the pivotal year of 1960 led Tibério to return to Africa and showcase his work in several newly established nations. He exhibited at Abidjan’s City Hall in Ivory Coast and at the Palace of the Presidency in Niamey, Niger, in 1961, and at Treichville’s Hall of Information in Ivory Coast the following year. In 1966 he took part in the Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres (First World Festival of Black Arts) in Dakar, Senegal, a landmark event that brought together artists from all over the world. Following the festival, Tibério was invited by Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, to settle in Dakar, where he lived and maintained a studio for six years. Through these efforts and his pan-African sensibility, Tibério contributed directly to the formation of post-independence modernism in Africa.

Tibério’s political discontent led him to leave Senegal for Rome in 1971. He lived in Italy and France for the rest of his life and continued to exhibit his work in various cities across Europe and Africa until his death in 2005.