Chaïbia Talal

Femme et enfant, 1974

Unique Artwork

Oil on Canvas

CM H 100 W 100

IN H 39.37 W 39.37

Signed by artist

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About the work

Femme et enfant, 1974

This work is part of the permanent collection of the MACAAL. The works was part of the exhibition E MOI.

Satement of the founder of the collection.

"I feel anew the very first stirrings, born of the exchanges between those three works that gave me life.

Three generous artists who inspired, who shared, and who transmitted. They are at my core, my foundation, my Moroccan origins, indispensable to my evolution. Who would I have become without them? Would I even be?

For Moroccan art is my original source of energy. It raised me, and educated me. Alternately father and mother, then friend and professor, it is the mentor that forged my character. I was nurtured by its collective memory, by the artists that overwhelmed me through their singular works, each according to his own experience, his suffering, his sensitivity, his beliefs and doubts.

I must confess that I have often felt invaded by emotion, the emotion created by a force of Passion that sets our hearts beating in furied rhythm, desperately sought and yet at the same time feared. And this I felt each time our family grew, each time a new work came to join us.

In order to meet as one, we had no need for common feelings or shared characteristics. Quite the contrary, we each had our own field of reference, and our individual techniques. I am convinced that therein lies my strength, in the union and fusion of individual practices with multiple references.

Modern art shaped me, transported me, and pierced me through. Deconstructing the marks, sublimating the color, examining the format, daring the medium. I open my hiding place to all of its abstractions. Powerfully lyrical, or poetically geometric. And this is why I am so inspired by the extolling words of Baudelaire: «The aim for the artist is to extract from fashion the poetry that resides in its historical envelope, to distil the eternal from the transitory.»*

My early days were modest, tentative at times. But in those first efforts I proved myself to be a visionary!

Now please don’t imagine me to be pretentious, but truthfully, back then I had understood that Art was a formidable tool for interpretation, for exchange, and for persuasion.

Driven by this knowledge, I became confident. I developed awareness of myself and my assets. Steeled with these convictions my personality took wing, my vision of the future took form and I understood what I wished to become. I wanted to take part in this new impetus of creativity, a participation that would not represent a break from modern art, but rather a fellowship of the hybrid creativity of artistic processes. I craved the new, the different, the original, the absurd, the isolated, the emergent."

About artist

Chaïbia Talal

A major Moroccan artist of the 20th century, Chaïbia Talal is one of the main representatives of naive art, this figuration ignores the rules of perspective, the realism of colours and the academicism of drawing.

A self-taught painter attached to popular subjects, she is nicknamed the "peasant of the arts". Chaïbia Talal does not seek to propose realistic representations, but its own vision of the world, in which the Moroccan woman occupies a central place. A vision of the cheerful world made of simple pleasures and human warmth, transcribed through the use of bright and warm colours arranged in wide flat areas.

The whole is a joyful colourful patchwork in movement, enhanced in places by large black and expressive lines that define the contours of its characters. This portrait of a woman holding her child thus becomes the symbol/expression of the joys of maternal love.

About Museum

MACAAL - Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden

In 2016, Fondation Alliances committed itself to long-term public action in order to contribute to the development of educational and cultural leisure activities in Marrakech by offering the city an art museum.

The Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech, is an independent, not-for-profit contemporary art museum and one of the first of its kind in North Africa.

MACAAL is dedicated to the promotion of African art across a range of media, with diverse exhibition and educational programmes. The museum nurtures an understanding of contemporary African art by collecting and exhibiting both established and emerging artists, and highlighting the creative energy and cultural diversity found across the continent.

MACAAL is a philanthropic initiative of Moroccan art collectors Alami Lazraq and his son Othman Lazraq. It forms part of their charitable not-for-profit association Fondation Alliances, which focuses on supporting cultural development in Morocco. Motivated by a passion for the arts, and managed by Othman, MACAAL brings the Lazraq family’s private collection of modern and contemporary African art, built up over the past 40 years, to a broader audience.

Othman Lazraq — President
Mouna Lazraq — Head of the Commercial Department
Meriem Berrada — Artistic Director
Janine Dieudji — Exhibitions Director
Hanaa El mrabet — Sales and Event Planning Manager
Yassir Yarji — Gallery Educator

MACAAL
Al Maaden, Sidi Youssef Ben Ali
40000 Marrakech, Morocco Read more