Tabaski III

Among the foremost artists from the African continent, Iba Ndiaye became involved in arts and design from an early age, painting posters for the local cinema. In 1948, he relocated from Senegal to France, where he studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts, Montpellier and lived at the artist residence La Ruche in Montmartre. Under the guidance of Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001), Ndiaye served as co-founder and teacher at the École de Dakar between 1959 and 1966. During this period, he traveled throughout Europe, North America, and West Africa, studying historical and contemporary art and architecture.

Throughout his life, Ndiaye returned to particular subjects, including the annual rites of Tabaski, or Eid al-Adha (the feast of sacrifice). The theme of sacrifice expressed through his Tabaski series served as a locus for Ndiaye’s further considerations of the legacies of colonialism and reflections on European painters. He first began painting the subject in 1967, drawing inspiration from events in his hometown, as well as from intense study of Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox (Musée du Louvre, Paris), and returned to these ideas in the 1990s, producing vivid smaller scale works. Tabaski III belongs to the earlier campaign as one of three monumental paintings at the series core.

Millions of sheep are sacrificed each year during Tabaski, commemorating the prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his only son to God. Ndiaye described this tradition as deeply entrenched in the legacy of West African experience and a "pretext to denounce oppression and massacres, asserting that ‘the lack of a conscience of revolt always leads us to be someone else’s sheep.’" [1]

[1] David Pullins. "Iba Ndiaye: Between Latitude and Longitude," African Art at The Met: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 83 (Fall 2025), p. 39. See also El Hadj Malick Ndiaye. "Iba Ndiaye (1928–2008): Comment interpreter la modernite avec un pinceau? (1ère partie)," Ethiopiques no. 83 (2009), p. 240.