Au cœur de l'Afrique classique is the catalogue of the eponymous exhibition organized by Jacques Germain in partnership with Parcours des Mondes, held from September 9 to 14, 2025, at Galerie Gradiva.

The Montreal-based dealer Jacques Germain, a former exhibitor and longtime visitor of Parcours des Mondes, wished to conceive this exhibition and its catalogue as a tribute to the event that has marked his career.

“I had long wanted to step outside the framework of the fair to offer something more intimate, more free — a gesture of recognition,” he confides.

This volume superbly illustrates some sixty works on view. A selection “subjective, certainly, but deliberate,” like a negative self-portrait of his career as a dealer.

A look at classical art.
Does classical African art exist? Behind this question lies a critical reflection on the history of taste and the aesthetic hierarchies established in the twentieth century. Is it a fixed canon, a Western construct, or a more complex dialogue between traditions, circulations, and perspectives? Jacques Germain responds through a selection of works from the major stylistic centers of West and Central Africa, chosen according to the criteria that have always guided him: authenticity, aesthetic quality, age, expressive power.

Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers, PhD in cultural anthropology and former curator of African art in several international museums, contributes an original essay examining the mechanisms of canonization in African art. Like classical music — whose repertoire was invented and stabilized in the nineteenth century — “classical African art” is the result of an ideological construction.

Through concrete examples, the author argues — as does this exhibition — for a broadening of perspective, more faithful to the historical reality of circulations and hybridizations.