Lot 25: Papa Ibra Tall (Senegal 1935-2015) Vin Noir

Papa Ibra Tall (Senegal 1935-2015)
Vin Noir signed and dated 'PapaIbraTall 64' (lower right); inscribed 'VIN NOIR' (verso)oil on canvas board 98.5 x 98.5cm (38 3/4 x 38 3/4in).

Senegalese artist Papa Ibra Tall (b. 1935, d. 2015) was a crucial figure in the history African modernism, Senegal's nationalist arts movement, and Négritude. The liberatory ideology of Négritude was first formulated in the 1930s and espoused by poets and politicians Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal, Léon Damas from French Guiana, and Aimé Césaire from Martinique. For these and scores of other politicians, artists, authors, it protested colonialism, promoted African heritage, culture, and identity, and advocated for Pan-African and Afro-diasporic solidarities. It also deeply shaped the work of Tall throughout his career, as well as the production of other similarly preoccupied members of what became known as the École de Dakar, which included artists such as Bacary Dième and Ibou Diouf.Initially educated in Senegal, Papa Ibra Tall traveled to France in 1955, supported by Senghor and his party who were interested in nurturing the talent of Senegalese artists for the benefit of the nation. While in Paris, Tall studied various media and artmaking techniques, working with architecture at the École Spéciale d'Architecture et des Beaux-Arts, as well as pottery, painting, drawing, tapestry, and silk screen printing at various French institutions. In 1960, Tall returned to a Senegal that was working to build up its national culture and doing so by investing specifically in the fine arts. That year – which also coincided with Senegal's independence from France— Senghor, who had become the nation's first president, opened the École des Arts du Sénégal, ushering in a new period of government-backed artistic production. Tall taught at the school alongside other artists such as Iba Ndiaye and served as the co-chair with Pierre Lods of the Section de Recherches Plastiques Nègres, working to develop an understanding of modern Senegalese art informed by Négritude and to eschew European artistic conventions. In 1965, Tall left his position at the art school to found and direct what would become the Manufacture Sénégalaise des Arts Décoratifs.Tall's oeuvre from the 1960s demonstrates his commitment to Négritude as well as the development of his unique visual language, which he explored through various media such as paintings and tapestries. Works like Black Wine feature vibrant colors and sinuous lines that transverse the entire canvas, page, or tapestry. Each mark or thread is methodically and rhythmically placed; Tall was a very detail-oriented, skilled draftsman who created swirling, precise compositions in his effort to help create a national artistic sphere and idiom. Senghor's Négritude worked to imagine a universal black experience, typically conceived of as an idealized, essentialized blackness, to formulate transnational black solidarities. Tall's Black Wine is likely named after a line from Senghor's 1945 poem "Femme Noire," which praises the beauty of the black woman—calling her akin to "black wine"— and later equates her to an Africa that needs to be protected. The last lines of the poem read, "I sing your passing beauty and fix it for all Eternity/before jealous Fate reduces you to ashes to nourish the roots of life." For those inspired by Négritude, African culture and heritage needed to be safeguarded and valued. To do so, artists and authors relied upon both historical and fictional understandings of the African past. For example, in Tall's painting, the darkened eyes and profile view of the figure in Black Wine evokes African masking traditions. Additionally, the beads on the figure's neck and wrist, as well as the carefully elongated fingers and neck, give Tall's subject a sense of cool and collected elegance. Black Wine importantly underscores the ideological connections between Tall and Senghor as well as the importance of Négritude for many African artists during the mid-twentieth century.We are grateful to Jessica Womack, Doctoral Student, Princeton University for her assistance in the preparation of the above catalogue entry.