Many documents, photographs, paintings, drawings or other works of art, not exclusively African, thus reveal over "Senghor and the arts. Reinventing the universal" the trace left by the one who was the first president of Senegal after his independence in 1960 and who wanted to claim a place for Africa in the world.

A pioneer of "negritude", he defined this cultural and political concept as rooted in the values ​​and civilizations of the black world.

For Senghor, "African art is both rootedness and openness," Mamadou Diouf, professor of African studies and history at Columbia University in New York, told AFP. and curator of the exhibition.

The confrontation between Senegalese and foreign arts is in reality for him the occasion of a mixture that he applies in his cultural projects.

Under his mandate, which lasted twenty years, more than a quarter of the State budget was devoted to education, training and culture.

What develop the "soft power" of the country.

"It is not only a question of defending the black art of the past", declared Senghor in 1966, but of showing that African art is "a gushing source which does not dry up" and is at the same level as the European art.

In the 1960s, the painter Iba N'Diaye thus initiated the students of the School of Arts in Dakar to the Fine Arts as they are taught in Europe.

At the entrance to the exhibition, an enormous and colorful tapestry by the artist Modou Niang testifies to the know-how of the National Tapestry Factory of Thiès, inaugurated by Senghor in 1966.

"He thinks of this factory as a place of reconciliation of different trends", techniques imported from France and traditional culture, notes Sarah Ligner, also curator of the exhibition.

Feeding on Europe

Between the archives and the works on display, a few photographs show the troupe of the National Theater Daniel Sorano, financed by the Senegalese state, in full performance of "Macbeth" by Shakespeare in 1968.

Léopold Sedar Senghor, former president of Senegal, academician and poet, poses on May 11, 1989 in his garden in Verson (Calvados) © MYCHELE DANIAU / AFP/Archives

A year later, this same performance took place at the Odéon theater in Paris.

"Senghor, what matters to him is to be present in the time of the world. It is not to create something on the side but to place Africa in the world", underlines Mamadou Diouf.

Francophile and the first African to sit in the French Academy, Senghor remained attached to France, even after the independence of Senegal.

In his desire to develop the cultural panorama of his country, he brought European art back to Senegal in the 1970s, through exhibitions by the great artists of his century.

For example, he invited Marc Chagall to exhibit his work at the Dynamic Museum of Dakar in 1971, and Pablo Picasso did so a year later.

In 1974, the paintings of Pierre Soulages were the subject of an exhibition inaugurated by the artist in Dakar.

An admirer of his abstract art, Senghor acquired one of his paintings in 1956, which hung in his office for a long time and is now on display in the Quai Branly exhibition.

"And that this art is the brother of Negro-African art, not by imitation but by nature, we will not be the last to rejoice", declared Senghor at the inauguration of the Soulages exhibition.

"It is the constant search for the multiplicity of expressions which, according to Senghor, defines the human condition", sums up Mamadou Diouf.

© 2023 AFP