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40 - Mehdi QOTBI (Morocco, born 1951) Symphony Oil on canvas 100 …
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Estimate €4,000 - €6,000
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Description
Mehdi QOTBI (Morocco, born 1951) Symphony Oil on canvas 100 x 80 cm Countersigned, located and titled on the back QOTBI "symphonie. Painted in the 1970s. *** Oil on canvas, countersigned, located and titled on the reverse (39⅜ × 31½ in.). Painted in the 1970's. Provenance Private collection, acquired in the 1970s from the artist. We would like to thank Mr Mehdi QOTBI for confirming the authenticity of this work. Dominated by deep, dark tones, this composition is built on a chromatic economy that favours subtle contrasts and effects of density. On its surface, a fine, almost dissolved calligraphic framework runs through the whole: abundant but deliberately illegible, it is not a text to be deciphered but an autonomous plastic vocabulary. In Qotbi's work, the sign loses its primary function and becomes a rhythm, a breath, the inner tension of the painting. Born in Rabat in 1951, Mehdi Qotbi discovered his passion for drawing while decorating a wall at his secondary school in Kénitra. In 1967, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Rabat, where a decisive meeting with Jilali Gharbaoui, the first Moroccan abstract painter, reinforced his vocation. He moved to France in 1969, graduating from the Beaux-Arts de Toulouse in 1972, before continuing his training at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. From 1973 to 2007, he taught visual arts in France and Morocco while pursuing an international career, supported by the critics Pierre Gaudibert, Otto Hahn and Pierre Restany. His work is rooted in the hurufiyya tradition, but at the same time breaks free from it: on his canvases, a twirling, musical and compulsive script undulates endlessly in incantatory vibrations - what Qotbi himself calls a "descriptor", a sign freed from all legibility and cultural hierarchy. His work is now represented in museum collections around the world, and the Institut du Monde Arabe has devoted a retrospective to him from 15 October 2024 to 5 January 2025. Since 2011, appointed by King Mohammed VI, he has chaired the Fondation Nationale des Musées du Maroc. Born in Rabat in 1951, Mehdi Qotbi discovered his passion for drawing while decorating a wall at his secondary school in Kénitra. In 1967, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Rabat, where a decisive meeting with Jilali Gharbaoui, the first Moroccan abstract painter, reinforced his vocation. He moved to France in 1969, graduating from the Beaux-Arts de Toulouse in 1972, before continuing his training at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. From 1973 to 2007, he taught visual arts in France and Morocco while pursuing an international career, supported by the critics Pierre Gaudibert, Otto Hahn and Pierre Restany. His work is rooted in the hurufiyya tradition, but at the same time breaks free from it: on his canvases, a twirling, musical and compulsive script undulates endlessly in incantatory vibrations - what Qotbi himself calls a "descriptor", a sign freed from all legibility and cultural hierarchy. His work is now represented in museum collections around the world, and the Institut du Monde Arabe has devoted a retrospective to him from 15 October 2024 to 5 January 2025. Since 2011, appointed by King Mohammed VI, he has chaired the Fondation Nationale des Musées du Maroc.
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About the sale Arab, African & Indian Modernities
Auction location
Auction time 06/18/2026 at 2:30 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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