Painter
Abdelkader Rhorbal
Kasbahs floating in dreamlike landscapes, keys that open every door of life, flowers invading the canvas: Abdelkader Rhorbal paints a surrealism that is his alone, romantic and steeped in Sufism.
The artist
Career
Born in Fez, Abdelkader Rhorbal showed great talent very young and is self-taught; in 1969 he also earned a diploma in lapidary art. Based for years in Safi, where he chaired a visual arts association and painted murals, he designed some fifteen Moroccan postage stamps from 1986 and in the early 1990s. His innovative painting earned him a gold medal for figurative oil painting in Rome in 1986, a bronze medal in France in 1989, the first prize of the International Festival of Contemporary Art on Music in 1995 and the international grand prize for arts and letters of the Festival de la Mer at Carry-le-Rouet in 1999.
Romantic rather than surrealist
His periods follow one another: a dark realism-surrealism in the 1980s and 1990s, then a purely Moroccan surrealism of kasbahs and regional landscapes, and from 2000 a brighter world of flowers and vegetation. “I feel much more romantic than surrealist,” he says, drawing on national heritage, history and the tales his mother told him. For the critic Abdellah Cheikh, he sings the creative imagination of popular memory through a mannerist chromatic research playing on illusion and trompe-l’œil; some works translate Qur’anic verses into visual compositions.
Landmarks
- 1986 — Gold medal, figurative oil painting, Rome
- 1986-1994 — Designs some fifteen postage stamps
- 1991 — Oudayas Museum, Rabat
- 1994 — Flandria Art Gallery, Tangier; Marbella
- 1995 — First prize, International Festival of Contemporary Art on Music, France
- 1998 and 2012 — Galerie Mohamed El Fassi, Rabat
- 1999 — Grand prize, Festival de la Mer, Carry-le-Rouet
- 2015 — Galerie Bab El Kebir, Rabat
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In the same spirit
Discover works by Mohamed Jaamati, Saïd Lahssini and Abdelkarim El Azhar, or browse all Moroccan paintings for sale.
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