School of Paris

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The School of Paris (French: École de Paris, pronounced [ekɔl də paʁi]) refers to the French and émigré artists who worked in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. Never a single art movement or institution, the term "School of Paris" refers instead to the primacy of Paris as the centre of Western art between 1900 and 1940. Artists of Jewish origin always figured prominently in the School of Paris. Before 1917, Jews faced restrictions in mobility within the Pale of Settlement and strict quotas or outright bans from studying art in the Russian Empire's most illustrious art schools in St. Petersburg and Moscow. So many got their start in Odesa, Vilnius, Kyiv, and Munich before moving to Paris for reasons that included artistic ambition, a desire to escape the pogroms of the Russian Empire, and the hope that the exoneration of Dreyfus in 1906 was "a sign that eventually the state would in fact side with justice and inclusion." In the 1930s and 1940s, many of these artists immigrated...

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