A tribute to the career of the American artist Anne Eisner, through a selection of works inspired by her stay in the Congo and recently acquired by the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac.

In 1946, the American artist Anne Eisner (1911-1967) visited Africa for the first time. She travelled with her future husband, Patrick Putnam (1904-1953). In the early 1930s, the trained anthropologist established a hotel in Epulu called “Camp Putnam”, in the northeast of the Belgian colony of Congo. Anne Eisner lived there for seven years close to the Mbuti societies. During her stay, she learned more about the Ituri rainforest and documented the lives of its inhabitants.

A painter since the 1930s, Anne Eisner was attentive to the developments of American abstract expressionism. The discovery of the African continent and her move to “Camp Putnam” had a powerful impact on her artistic work. Back in the United States in 1954, the artist continued her pictorial meditation initiated in the Congo, on the threshold of abstraction. In conjunction with her artistic production, she tried to contribute to the study of the indigenous populations of Ituri.