Tahar Ben Jelloun, the painted author, is uncovered to Rabat | EUROtoday

On May 16, 2025

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L’author is thought, the painter, much less. Tahar Ben Jelloun, born in 1944 in Fez, wrote greater than forty books, gained quite a few literary prizes, together with the Goncourt Prize in 1987 for Sacred evening. In Rabat, we uncover him painter. The museum of latest artwork Mohamed VI devotes an exhibition to him with forty of his work till June 30. The canvases dialogue with its manuscripts, the place the textual content is combined with the drawings, as in its work the place phrases echo the formed shapes and colours. Tahar Ben Jelloun invitations us right into a brilliant world. A primary portray, Danceearlier than even coming into the exhibition, takes us into its quest for mild and colour.

From writing to canvas: a late however assumed transition

Since 2010, Tahar Ben Jelloun has been assiduously paint. Painting, even sculpture. It first admired it in museums, exhibitions or artist workshops, but additionally studied, analyzed, by his books, within the type of letters addressed to artists, Matisse and Delacroix, a ghost go to within the workshop of Alberto Giacometti. In different essays, he evokes the Moroccan masters of Belkahia portray (Casablanca faculty), Gharbaoui (summary painter) or Chaïbia (colorist).

He is an in depth buddy, Lorenzo Zichichi, an Italian obsessed with artwork, who was the set off for this new inventive journey. Lorenzo, who heads the San Salvatore in Lauro museum in Rome, took the initiative at some point to take the drawings of Tahar, those that dot his notebooks, and to enlarge them to repair them on canvases. “Ll said to me: Now you color. I was like a child going color. After a fortnight, he put me in front of a large white canvas and said to me: Go ahead, throw yourself in the water “Says Tahar Ben Jelloun. This shocking gesture was the start line of his inventive dive on the earth of portray. In a short while, what appeared to be kid’s play has develop into a critical train and a quest for colour and lightweight, notably the one which bathes the Mediterranean.

“I started and I made my first exhibition at Lorenzo. This first exhibition made a lot of noise in Italy, not on my painting, but on the fact that I am a known writer who is painting. I got into the game and organized a big exhibition at the Galerie du Passage in Paris. Almost everything has been sold. And there, I felt a certain legitimacy, ”says Tahar Ben Jelloun.

The exhibitions are linked, in Paris, on the Institute of the Arab World, but additionally in Morocco, Marrakech and Tangier. With self -mockery, he feedback: “In Morocco, there are many painters. And he, there (Tahar), he arrives. It is not enough for him to write, in addition, he wants to be a painter! Why not a filmmaker too… There were comments not very pleasant towards me. »»

The back and forth between the workshop and the office

How does he manage to juggle between his two passions, writing and painting? The answer is simple: discipline and sharing. In the morning, he devoted two to three hours to writing. Then he puts on his blouse to paint. Writing and painting are not just separate activities, but complementary expressions of its creativity. The writing is demanding, it requires a great concentration. Likewise, painting requires total immersion. He also recognizes that sometimes he has nothing to say, or nothing to paint.

Poetry occupies a preponderant place in its pictorial work. For him, poetry is the mathematics of feelings. It is perfect. Some paintings are marked by short sentences that enrich the visual experience, creating a bridge between the two forms of art. Poetry is not a simple addition, it is an integral part of the work. “Writing has come naturally. I don’t comment on the painting. The coming verse, the poetry that is there, is part of the whole, he explains. Poetry and painting are cousins, they enrich each other. »»

On one of his paintings, he wrote: “If the earth is blue, the orange is bitter and the scruples, a small pebble in the shoe. Sometimes calligraphy invites itself, but it is invisible, or rather illegible. “The signs are beautiful to see, but they are not forced to mean something,” he adds.

Morocco in palette

In his paintings, he embarks on the quest for colors, their association. “We have to find the color that is necessary next to another. The painting is just intuition. “There is not worse than a color that arrives and fucks everything in the air. She becomes intruder, vexation for the painter. So we erase, we throw, we burn, we tear, whatever, “he adds.

His inspiration, he draws it from his careful observation of the landscapes. “Morocco is a flowery country, full of colors. It is not the sadness of the countries of the North, ”he notes. Often working in Paris, he acknowledges that colour belongs to reminiscence, childhood and remark. “My childhood is there permanently. She brings me a lot to write and paint. We had a very modest little house. Like all the houses of Fez, it was open to the sky. In the morning, I looked at the sky, blue, magnificent, ”he says.

“Many of his works invite escape, through open doors or infinite horizons,” observes Abdalziz El Idrissi, the exhibition commissioner and director of the Mohammed VI museum.

The Moroccan School in Written

Referring to Moroccan painters, Tahar quotes Ahmed Cherkaoui, the very best, sadly died in 1967 at 36 years previous. He additionally evokes Mohamed Meheli and his kinetic work. “Meheli chose the wave because he was born in Asilah and his house was facing the sea where, very small, he saw the course of the waves endlessly,” he stated.

“Few people know that Tahar Ben Jelloun was close to the first artistic movement, aware, in Morocco in the years 1960-1970: the school of Casablanca,” stated Abdalziz El Idrissi. He frequented them, wrote on their work. In truth, they influenced his method to paint.

Tahar Ben Jelloun additionally cites for example the painters of Essaouira, essentially the most genuine in his eyes. “They only look like themselves. They were not looking outside the referents. They created their own imagination, their own forms. It’s beautiful. Unfortunately, they do not enjoy recognition in Morocco. These are modest and simple painters who do not intertwine their work at all, but who are very happy to know that people like what they do. »»

As much as his stories are dark, as much his painting is bright. “The quest for the writer is clear. Humanist, I defend human rights, I defend the rights of women and the rights of the child. By my novels, by my writings, I try a little bit to make things happen. I am not the only one, many of us, fortunately! But as a painter, I have no pretension. My only ambition is that it makes a few happy, ”he feedback.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

He then tells this anecdote. “With my friend writer Jean-Claude Carrière, during my exhibition at the Institute of the Arab world, he was there, already sick, in the middle of all my paintings, and he said: I feel good. It was for me the best compliments. »»

* The writer and painter exhibits “from writing to portray” from April 8 to June 30 on the Mohammed VI museum in Rabat (Morocco).

https://www.lepoint.fr/afrique/tahar-ben-jelloun-l-ecrivain-qui-peint-s-expose-a-rabat-16-05-2025-2589743_3826.php