Retrouvailles

In 1963, he was chosen along with three fellow students (Alioune Diakhaté, Mar Fall and Doudou Diagne) to take a course in tapestry weaving at the Gobelins in Paris. He left Senegal at the age of twenty to discover the low-warp loom in prestigious French workshops. In Paris, he was a diligent and conscientious student and met some of the great artists of the time, such as Dom Robert. This was the starting point of a career that was essentially devoted to the art of fibre and mural decoration.

In 1966, he was appointed as a weaving instructor, responsible for teaching the art of weaving to young recruits at the newly inaugurated factories. Mamadou Wade continued his own training by travelling. First at the Aubusson School of Decorative Arts in 1970-1971, then in the USSR at the end of the 1970s, and finally in Belgium.

Mamadou Wade also drew and painted birds, helping to make them one of the favourite motifs of the Thiès tapestry-makers. In his works, the birds are sometimes charged with a clear political meaning, sometimes the pretext for demonstrating his mastery of the interplay of lines and contrasts. Mamadou Wade has kept his studio in the Village des Arts, where his career and his status as an elder are particularly respected by today's artists.