Born in 1952, Dakar, Senegal
Died in 2019, Dakar, Senegal
According to Nicole Guez, sociologist, art critic, curator, and author of Guide de l’Art Africain contemporain (1991), Assane N’Doye is one of the most talented artists of his generation. Born in Dakar in 1952, N’Doye showed a strong interest in the visual arts from an early age. As a child, alongside a conventional school education, he attended an artisanal school where he learned drawing, pottery, modeling, and enamel decoration.
From 1969 to 1972, he studied at the École Nationale des Arts in Dakar and began selling his drawings through the Galandou Diouf Gallery in central Dakar. In 1974, after passing the entrance exam for the École Nationale d’Art Décoratif in Aubusson, he left Senegal for France. He soon joined an artist studio specializing in textile design, producing print models for major furniture and fashion houses.
By the late 1970s, N’Doye devoted himself entirely to painting, exploring his art through his African roots. A committed artist, in 1982 he co-founded and presided over the Wilfredo Lam Association, whose motto was “make ourselves heard”—a platform for non-European artists seeking to claim their place in contemporary art in France.
N’Doye paints and draws with equal ease on paper and canvas. He stretches, deforms, and recomposes limbs, giving the human body extraordinary flexibility to convey movement, dynamism, and the power of gesture. Coming from a Lébou family—a historically matrilineal ethnic group—female figures hold a central place in both his life and work. As he explains:
“Women play an important role in my painting. I work mainly through curves, which allow me to express the eternal feminine, courage, gentleness, and strength. Curves can also resemble a scimitar to show force, or a gourd to express generosity, which I see as essential components of the African soul.”
Over nearly 40 years, Assane N’Doye participated in numerous exhibitions in France and abroad, attracting collectors and institutions alike. His works are now in the collections of the Musée d’Angoulême, the French Ministry of Culture, the City of Paris, the African American Museum in Los Angeles, and the Cérès Franco Collection. In 1990, through the Fulbright program, he was invited as an artist-in-residence at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he remained and worked until 2014, gaining recognition among American audiences, collectors, and galleries.
According to Sylvain Sankalé, N’Doye’s colorful, curvaceous, and vibrant work is highly emblematic of what has since been called the Dakar School. After temporarily receding in the face of the next generation’s artistic explosion, it has recently returned to prominence through publications and exhibitions that finally give it proper recognition. As N’Doye himself predicted about his work:
“It participates in its era and will ensure its permanence when it becomes the gaze of a past generation.”
