'Murphy provides fresh perspectives on Senegalese modern art through archival sources. In clear, persuasive language, she explores decolonization that transcends reductive binaries of Europe versus Africa.' --Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, The Steven and Lisa Tananbaum Curator in Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 'With her compelling transhistorical approach, Murphy deepens and complicates our knowledge of Senegalese modernism, anticolonial politics, and the networked histories of modernisms from the global south.' --Elizabeth Harney, University of Toronto Scarborough What role did art play in the process of decolonisation, and what strategies were developed by artists to reconfigure power relations and artistic practices? How can modernism be decentered and the 1950s to 1970s rethought from a global and interconnected perspective? The art of decolonisation adopts a transnational and transhistorical lens to examine the artistic, political, and diplomatic relations between a former colonial power and an emancipated colony at the time of decolonisation and the Cold War. Focusing on France and Senegal, it explores how the circulation of art works, artists, and ideas reveals the power struggles that shaped the art scene between 1950 and 1970. From the development of modern art in Senegal to challenges to the cooperation policies between the two countries, from the 'Picasso' and 'Soulages' exhibitions held in Dakar in the 1970s to the 1974 exhibition of contemporary Senegalese art in Paris, a new artistic geopolitics was taking shape--one in which visual artists and filmmakers played an active role.