Paul Bilhaud (31 December 1854 – 8 January 1933) was a French playwright and librettist. An old friend of the author Alphonse Allais, he is remembered along his friend as a forerunner of minimalism with his painting Combat de nègres dans un tunnel ("(Negroes fight in a tunnel)"), displayed for the first time in 1882, more than thirty years before the « Black Square » by Kazimir Malevich However, Bilhaud was not the first to create an all-black artwork: for example, Robert Fludd published an image of "Darkness" in his 1617 book on the origin and structure of the cosmos; and Bertall published his black Vue de La Hogue (effet de nuit) in 1843.) Inspired by Bilhaud, Alphonse Allais proposed other monochrome paintings, published in his Album primo-avrilesque in 1897.