Painter
Mohamed Ataallah
“My immediate aim is to seek the simplification of form and colour.” Mohamed Ataallah built, from the 1960s, one of the most rigorous geometric abstractions in Moroccan painting.
The artist
Career
Born in Ksar El Kebir in 1939 and known in France as Romain Atala, Mohamed Ataallah was one of the first students of the School of Fine Arts in Tetouan, although his style is closer to the Casablanca School. He was among the very few Moroccan painters working in geometric abstraction in the early 1960s, alongside Mohamed Chabâa and Mohamed Melehi. A Franco-Moroccan painter whose work bears the mark of a cultural in-between, he died in Caen in 2014.
Modules and grids
His pared-down vocabulary is entirely oriented towards form and geometry, influenced by Western modernism, Constructivism and conceptual art. In “Jute 5”, bands of gloss paint occupy the centre of a jute canvas, a deep black flat area set against two orthogonal coloured bands: a grid whose chromatic density contrasts with the deliberately empty canvas. Assembling geometric modules into vibrant harmonies, Ataallah invented a new abstraction rooted in the graphic forms of his own culture.
Landmarks
- 1939 — Born in Ksar El Kebir
- Among the first students of the School of Fine Arts, Tetouan
- 1960s — Geometric abstraction, alongside Chabâa and Melehi
- 2014 — Dies in Caen
Collections
- Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech
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In the same spirit
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