Iba N'Diaye

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Iba N'Diaye
Iba N'Diaye seated in front of one the "Tabaski" series, (1995)
Born	1928 Saint-Louis, Senegal
Nationality	Senegal France
Field	Painting
Training	École des Beaux-Arts and Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris

Iba N'Diaye (Born Saint-Louis, Senegal 1928) is a French-Senegalese painter.

Contents 1 Early life and training 2 Return to Africa 3 Exhibition history 4 Work 4.1 Notable works 5 References 5.1 External links

[edit] Early life and training

Born in Saint Louis, Senegal, when he was 15 years old began his studies at the prestigious Lycée Faidherbe. As a student he painted posters for cinemas and businesses in his town. He studied architecture in Senegal before traveling to France in 1948, where he began studying architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier. The sculptor Ossip Zadkine introduced him the traditional African sculpture and he travelled throughout Europe, studying art and architecture. N'Diaye frequented jazz music clubs while in Paris in the 1940s, and his interest in the medium continues to show itself in his work. In Paris he studied fine art at the École des Beaux-Arts and Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

[edit] Return to Africa

When Senegal achieved independence in 1959, he returned at the request of President Léopold Senghor, to found the Department of Plastic Arts at the National School of Fine Arts of Senegal in Dakar. There he exhibited his work in 1962 and worked as a teacher until 1966. He taught and inspired a generation of fine artists, including painters such as Mor Faye.

N'Diaye, along with Papa Ibra Tall and Pierre Lods founded The Ecole de Dakar, a genre which allied painting, sculpture and crafts into the literary movement of Negritude: an attempt to assert a distinctivly African voice in the arts, free of, if borrowing elements from, the traditions of colonial nations. "Africanité" (Africaness) combined the Negritude of Senghor and the Pan-Africanism of decolonialism. N'Diaye, though, remained committed to teach the fundamentals and techniques of Western art, at times putting him at odds with his fellow teachers and artists. He wrote of the danger of "Africaness" sliding back into a simplistic Noble savage self-parody if rejecting Western forms meant rejecting a rigorous technical background. The pursuit of this "instinctive" Africaness is best exemplified by Papa Ibra Tall, who felt that African artists must "unlearn" western habits, tapping instinctual African creativity. Tall and N'Diaye were the two best known French educated Seneglese fine artists of their time. While Tall's vision was to win out in the short term, the 1970s and 80s saw a reappraisal of N'Diaye's positions and an evential rejection of the more straight-forward state sponsored "Africanité".^[1] President Senghor, as a poet one of the founders of Negritude, devoted as much as %25 of the Senegalese budget to the arts and was seen as the patron of artists like The Ecole de Dakar. Misgivings by artists like N'Diaye (as well as outright opposition by artists such as film-maker/author Ousmane Sembene) fed into a later creative break with Negritude, in the 70s led by the Laboratoire Agit-Art art community in Dakar. N'Diaye's disenchantment and return to France in 1967 came just a year after the World Festival of Black Arts was founded in Dakar: a triumph of the "Africanité" arts. ^[2]

[edit] Exhibition history

Working at his Parisian "la Ruche Atelier" and his home in the Dordogne, N'Diaye painted some of his best known works, a series on the theme of the biblical ritual slaughter of a lamb: the "Tabaski" series, exhibiting them at Sarlat in 1970 and at Amiens in 1974.

N'Diaye has exhibited his paintings in New York City (1981), in Holland (1989); in 1990 in Tampere (1990), and at the Museum Paleis Lange Voorhout in The Hague (1996). In 1987 was the subject of a retrospective at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Munch. In 2000, he returned to Saint Louis for his first exhibition in Senegal since the 1960s.

[edit] Work

Influenced equally by western Modernism and African tradition, one reviewer described him as "a Senegalese painter whose insistence that African artists can be whatever they want to be". ^[3] His study of African sculpture has shown in his subjects, but treated in colors and mood reminiscent of abstract expressionism. Equally, Jazz musicians, painted in movement and swirls of color, have been a reoccurring theme in his work: his "Hommage à Bessie Smith" perhaps the best known.

[edit] Notable works

• Tabaski la Ronde à qui le Tour - 1970
• Sahel - 1977
• The Cry / Head of a Djem Statuette Nigeria - 1976
• Study of an African Sculpture - 1977
• The Painter and his Model - 1979
• Study of a Wé Mask - 1982
• Jazz in Manhattan - 1984
• Big Band - 1986
• Juan de Pareja Attacked by Dogs - 1986
• The Cry - 1987
• Hommage à Bessie Smith - 1987
• Trombone - 1995
• Trio - 1999

[edit] References

• Biography from the National Museum of African Art (United States).
• Elizabeth Harney. In Senghor's Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960-1995. Duke University Press (2004) ISBN 0822333953 p. 56, 63-90, 142-151, 159-66, 229.
• Elizabeth Harney. Ecole de Dakar: pan-Africanism in paint and textile, African Arts, (Autumn, 2002)
• Maureen Murphy, Harney, Elizabeth. – In Senghor’s Shadow. Art Politics, and the Avant-garde in Senegal, 1960-1995. Durham-London, Duke University Press, 2004, 316 p., Cahiers d'études africaines, 182, 2006.
• Bernard Pataux . Senegalese Art Today. African Arts, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 26-87
• R Lehuard. L'art nègre chez Picasso vu par Iba N'Diaye peintre africain. Arts d'Afrique noire, 1986, no58, pp. 9-22 .
• Clémentine Deliss. Dak'Art 92: Where Internationalism Falls Apart, African Arts, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jul., 1993), pp. 180-185.
• Okwui Enwezor and Franz W. Kaiser. Iba N’Diaye, peintre entre continents: vous avez dit “primitif”? ( Iba N’Diaye, painter between continents: Primitive? Says who?) Paris: Adam Biro, 2002. ND1099.N43N3834 2002. OCLC 49199501.
• Iba N'diaye. Peindre est se souvenir. [s.l.]: NEAS-Sépia, 1994. (Conde-sur-Noireau (France) : Corlet). ND1099.S4N332 1994 AFA. OCLC 32042768.
• Portions of this article were translated from French language Wikipedia's fr:Iba N'Diaye.

[edit] External links

• Official website of Iba Ndiaye.
• Resume at Association pour la Défense Et l'Illustration des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie.
• Art History Archive: Biography and images of some of his works (nd).
• Review of Franz Kaiser and Okwui Enwezor. Iba N'Diaye PRIMITIVE? SAYS WHO? IBA NDIAYE, PAINTER BETWEEN CONTINENTS. Adam Biro, Paris (2002) ISBN 2-84660-332-2 .
• Gamlin A. Diop: Images of four of Iba N'Diaye 's works.