Art movement · Senegal
The École de Dakar
The École de Dakar was the modern art movement of Senegal between about 1960 and 1974, supported by President Léopold Sédar Senghor and shaped by his philosophy of Négritude. Led by artists such as Papa Ibra Tall and Iba N'Diaye, it produced vivid, rhythmic paintings and monumental tapestries, and helped stage the 1966 World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar.
Updated 2 min read
A poet-president's programme
Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal's first president from 1960, was also a poet and one of the founders of Négritude, the intellectual movement that from the 1930s asserted the value of Black culture and identity. In power, he treated the arts as a national priority and invested heavily in them.
The art that grew under this patronage is called the École de Dakar. It was taught and shown in new national institutions, exhibited abroad as the face of the new country, and bought by the state.
Who led it
When Papa Ibra Tall returned to Senegal from France in 1960, he, the painter Iba N'Diaye and the French painter Pierre Lods set up the art section of the new national school of fine arts in Dakar. Tall and Lods championed an art drawn from intuition and African rhythm; N'Diaye, trained in Paris and more academic in his methods, argued for technique and became a more critical voice. The tension between the two approaches ran through the movement.
The typical École de Dakar picture is bright, rhythmic and patterned, with stylised figures, masks and dancers, and colour applied with energy rather than modelling.
Tapestries at Thiès
In 1966 Senghor and Tall founded a state tapestry workshop at Thiès, the Manufactures sénégalaises des arts décoratifs. Weavers translated paintings by Senegalese artists into large wool tapestries that were hung in public buildings and offered as diplomatic gifts around the world. The workshop still operates.
The 1966 festival
In April 1966 Dakar hosted the first World Festival of Negro Arts (Festival mondial des arts nègres), bringing together artists, musicians, writers and performers from Africa and its diaspora. Tall and N'Diaye helped organise its exhibition of contemporary art. The festival was the high point of the École de Dakar's public role.
The reaction
By the mid-1970s younger artists found the official style too decorative and too close to power. In 1974 the artist Issa Samb, the filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty and others founded the Laboratoire Agit'Art, a collective devoted to performance, debate and art that criticised the formalism of the École de Dakar.
Related
Senegal's later art scene includes the sculptors Ousmane Sow and Seyni Awa Camara (see our lists of Senegalese artists and Senegalese painters) and the Dak'Art biennale, described in African art fairs and biennales. For Senegal's popular music, see mbalax. For another post-independence art movement, see the Khartoum School.
