Paulin S. Vieyra's Iba N'Diaye: Seminal Modernists in Paint and Film

This article analyzes Paulin S. Vieyra's important documentary on Senegalese painter, professor, and modern artist Iba N'Diaye. The film records N'Diaye at the height of his career as an artist who is widely regarded as the first Modern painter of Senegal. It charts his trajectory from his childhood in Senegal to his education in France, back to Senegal as a professor, and finally in France as an established artist. N'Diaye was a founding professor of the École Nationale des Arts du Sénégal in 1960 and represented the country at important art events, both local (like the Festival Mondial des arts nègres, Dakar's Musée Dynamique, etc.) and international (São Paulo Biennial in Brazil, the African-American Institute of New York, etc.). Vieyra's camera offers the viewer a full, humanist representation of this African artist, showing him not only at work in the studio, but also in the spaces (in Senegal and France) that shaped his quotidian life. Combining an analysis of this film—the first documentary on a modern artist from not only Senegal, but all of Africa—with excerpts from Vieyra's Le cinéma au Sénégal (1983), it becomes clear how both the painter and the filmmaker successfully fostered psychological emancipation of the Senegalese, and African, mentalities through their work.