Iba Ndiaye
Iba N’Diaye is acknowledged as one of the most important painters of the 20th century in terms of his work and his role in founding the École de Dakar, the focal point of an artistic movement that helped shape the young nation of Senegal between the 1960s and 1980s.
Harnessing the creative energy of a newly emerging country, the movement contributed significantly to the establishment of a cultural policy for Senegal. It found expression through a group of Senegalese artists who featured in an exhibition entitled Tendances et Confrontation; this was organized by Ida N’Diaye for Dakar’s World Festival of Pan-African Art held in 1966. Other leading members included Papa Ibra Tall and Ibou Diouf.
N’Diaye was born in Saint-Louis in 1928. He studied architecture in Senegal before moving to Montpellier and subsequently Paris in the 1940s where he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1956, a young Iba N’diaye would take part in the First World Congress of Black Writers and Artists, a Parisien event which brought together black cultural advocates to discuss colonialism, liberation and the framework of Négritude. In attendance was Léopold Sédar Senghor, a poet who would later become the first president of Senegal in 1960 and founder of the Négritude movement.
Senghor argued that for black arts to truly be valued as integral to modernity, there had to be a look back to the traditions and local cultural heritage of Africa. The arts were central to Senghor’s political vision for Senegal, encouraging a unified African aesthetic which was embraced by many within the École de Dakar, but notably, not by Iba N’Diaye.
Despite being skeptical of President Senghor’s cultural agenda, Iba N’Diaye felt a strong pull to return to Senegal to assist in the transition from colony to independent state. In 1958, N’Diaye began to teach young painters in private evening classes run out of his studio in Dakar. Later in 1961, this studio would be absorbed into the new Institut National des Arts du Senegal, where he would continue to teach until 1964.
N’Diaye taught his student art history and valued classical Western studio art curriculums; the artist would send some students to France to further their education. Iba N’Diaye and his students did not try to embody a nationalised, innate and traditional African aesthetic and instead looked to their surroundings for inspiration, often producing work which leaned towards the abstract and featured European painting techniques, like Chiaroscuro. Unlike many of his colleagues who identified as Africans above all else, Iba N’Diaye saw himself as an artist first, and African second.
‘Notably to my young colleagues, I would give several words of advice: be on guard against those who insist that you must be ‘Africans’ before being painters or sculptors, for those who in the name of authenticity, which remains to be defined, continue to want to preserve you in an exotic garden. We are the sons of African cities, which were created, for the most part, in the colonial era, and were crucibles of an original culture, in which…foreign or indigenous cultural contributions dominate…it is in this role that you have a great responsibility: to make our profession legitimate in the eyes of our fellow countrymen, and in those of men from all continents.’
In challenging the idea of a unified African aesthetic, using strikingly European portraiture techniques, N’Diaye prompts a reevaluation of how we engage with artists and work originating from the African continent, and indeed, what it means to be African.
Created in 1962, works such as Portrait D’Anna exemplify N’diaye unique practice of blending his Senegelase identity with his formal European training at the École des Beaux-Arts. This delicate portrait stands in opposition to the livelier palettes and recognizable West African symbols used by several of his Senegalese contemporaries. However, despite its stylistic differences, N’Diaye takes pride in his Senegalese subject matter.
A portrait of his young niece, Anna, this intimate work shows N’diaye’s mastery of light and texture. The artist explores the physicality and the boundaries of paint, often featuring heavily textured surfaces. Here, Anna seems at one with the background, her body perfectly enveloped and highlighted by elegant tones of brown and beige. The brilliant shade of turquoise on her collar illuminates her faces and reverberates into the rest of the composition.
N’diaye often created portraits that featured his family and friends. For the artist, portraiture was a poetic exercise and a means through which to connect to a person’s entire being and deepest psyche. At the same time, it was Iba N’Diaye’s hope that his portraits served as commentary on wider social themes. The artist sought to pay homage to African women in particular, and Portrait d’Anna is one of several works created in this effort.
This work was included in the 1977 retrospective at the Dakar Musée Dynamique, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Senegal, and before that at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1963. Portrait d’Anna was reportedly previously in the collection of Raoul Lehuard, curator and founder of Le Revue Arts d’Afrique Noire and was included in a 1986 edition of the publication.
Bibliography:
In Senghor's Shadow: Art, Politics and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960-1995, p.63-64
Joseph L. Underwood ‘Parisian Echoes: Iba N’Diaye and African Moderisms’ in Burcu Dogramaci et al. (ed.), Arrival Cities: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th Century, 2020, pp. 164-166