Artist Kerry James Marshall shines a light on Black history in art at Kunsthaus Zürich

This spring and summer, the monumental works of artist Kerry James Marshall are on view at the Kunsthaus Zürich in The Histories exhibition, running until August 16th, 2026. Marshall’s paintings explore the lives, histories, and resilience of Black Americans, offering a vibrant, complex dialogue about visibility, belonging, and historical memory.

Black history in art through monumental narratives

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, and based in Chicago, Kerry James Marshall is regarded as one of the most influential contemporary painters. The Histories presents the first large-scale survey of his work in the German-speaking world, including key pieces spanning different phases of his career alongside new paintings. Many of the canvases are monumental in scale, reaching up to seven meters wide, and draw from both art history and popular culture.

Marshall’s work consistently centers Black figures, responding to centuries of exclusion from Western art traditions. His allegorical and multi-layered paintings combine personal memory, political history, and everyday life, creating complex pictorial spaces marked by intense color, technical precision, and emotional depth. By inserting Black bodies into historical and narrative frameworks, Marshall reimagines the possibilities of representation and challenges the gaps in the Western canon.

Reclaiming visibility and historical narrative

Throughout his career, Kerry James Marshall has critically engaged with the Western tradition of history painting, questioning the mechanisms that have marginalized Black subjects. In The Histories, his paintings confront power, identity, and social belonging while affirming joy, presence, and hope. Each work acts as both a visual and political statement, inviting viewers to consider who is included—or excluded—from art history.

The exhibition is curated by Mark Godfrey in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, and Cathérine Hug for the Kunsthaus Zürich, with support from David Zwirner. This ambitious survey highlights Marshall’s enduring influence on contemporary art, demonstrating how painting can simultaneously engage with history, society, and the act of seeing itself.