Jilali Gharbaoui

Jilali Gharbaoui was a Moroccan painter and sculptor from Jorf El Melha. He is considered, along with Ahmed Cherkaoui, a pioneer of modernist art in Morocco. Unlike other Moroccan modernist artists, his abstraction was based in brushstrokes and the "materiality of the paint" as opposed to Moroccan culture. Gharbaoui suffered from severe mental illness and died of suicide in Paris in 1971.

He started studying art at the Academie des Arts in Fes. He traveled to France in 1952. With the assistance of the novelist Ahmed Sefrioui, then director of fine arts in Rabat, Gharbaoui was able to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He studied for four years then worked at the Académie Julian for a year.

He befriended the poet and painter Henri Michaux, the painters Hans Hartung and Jean Dubuffet, and the art critic Pierre Restany.

With a grant from the Italian government, he lived in Rome from 1958 to 1960, when he returned to Morocco. In this period he frequently went to Paris for work, and in 1959, Pierre Restany introduced Gharbaoui at the Salon Comparaisons.

He was hosted often at a monastery in Toumliline, where he created wall decorations.

During his life, he exhibited around Morocco and in Egypt, France, the Netherlands, the United States, and Brazil. His art appeared in the magazine Souffles-Anfas.

He was found dead by suicide on a public bench in the Champ de Mars in Paris in 1971. His body was repatriated and buried in Fes.

In 1993, the Arab World Institute in Paris hosted a retrospective exhibition dedicated to him.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023