MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

In the era of President Léopold Senghor, Papa Ibra Tall was not only active as an artist, but also influential in the cultural dimension of Senegalese politics. He helped implement the Dakar School, a movement conceived after decolonisation to fulfil the philosophy of Négritude. Senghor conceived Négritude: “To assume the values of civilisation of the Black world […] thus bringing the contribution of the new Negroes to the civilisation of the universal”. Papa Ibra Tall learnt of black power militants and the American black jazz movement in Paris after studying at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture et les Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1955. In 1960, following a trip to the United States, he met jazz musician John Coltrane and activist Malcolm X. Later the same year, the year of independence in Senegal, he returned to Senegal and became head of the Section for Research in Negro Plastic Arts. It was at the Sèvres School of Craft that in 1962–1963 he became familiar with ceramics, screen-printing and, above all, tapestry, in which he then excelled at the National Tapestry Manufactory created by Senghor in 1966. A large tapestry depicting a celestial figure creating a galaxy, Semeuse d'étoiles is a key example of Papa Ibra Tall’s work as an artist.