[2] His artistic career began oil painting under the tutelage of amateur French painters in Dakar.
In 1955, he studied architecture at the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, where he was exposed to the Négritude movement and provided illustrations for the Présence Africaine.
He later attended the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and pursued instruction in Sèvres with the assistance of Senegalese president Léopold Sédar Senghor, where he studied painting, serigraphy, tapestry, mosaics, and comparative pedagogy.
[3] Papa Ibra Tall returned to Senegal from France in 1960, founding the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Dakar with Iba Ndiaye and Pierre Lods.
[3] At the behest of President Senghor, he founded the Manufacture Sénégalaise des Arts Décoratifs (MSAD) tapestry school in 1965.