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98 - Djamila BENT MOHAMED (Algiers 1933-2023) The widow, 1973 Mix…
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Estimate €15,000 - €20,000
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Description
Djamila BENT MOHAMED (Algiers 1933-2023) The widow, 1973 Mixed media on canvas 73 x 60 cm Signed and dated lower right in Arabic Jamila 73 Countersigned and titled on the back. *** Mixed media on canvas, signed and dated lower right in Arabic; signed and titled on the reverse (28¾ × 23⅝ in.). Painted in 1973. Provenance French private collection, acquired from the artist in Algeria. Painted in 1973, this portrait bears witness to Djamila Bent Mohamed's research into the female figure, the central subject of her work. The title - The Widow - is reminiscent of the iconographic universe of Issiakhem, whose solitary figures of bereaved women, hollowed out by loss, constitute one of the most powerful motifs in modern Algerian painting. Belonging to the same generation and evolving in the same Algerian artistic circles, Djamila Bent Mohamed shares with Issiakhem this attention to a femininity marked by history, without adopting the expressionist register: where Issiakhem works with matter in the urgency of gesture, she constructs through geometry and flatness, nourished by her simultaneous involvement in industrial design - she joined the major Algerian public companies that same year. In this way, the figure stands out as a singular synthesis of decorative heritage, formal rigour and the celebration of contemporary Algerian femininity. Born in 1933 in the Casbah of Algiers, Djamila Bent Mohamed grew up with her mother, a carpet art teacher, who passed on to her a taste for traditional skills. Trained at the Algiers School of Fine Arts under the miniaturist Mustapha Ben Debbagh, she became involved in the struggle for independence in the early 1950s. Arrested and tortured in 1957, she was freed thanks to the intervention of a group of women lawyers, including Gisèle Halimi. This radical experience had a lasting impact on her artistic sensibility. After independence, she resumed her studies alongside Issiakhem, Khadda and Mesli, then went on to perfect her skills at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (1969-1971) and the École supérieure des arts et métiers in Paris. Between 1971 and 1988, she worked as a designer and project manager in major Algerian public companies - a rare position for a woman at the time. Three times winner of the Grand Prix de la Ville d'Alger (1975, 1979, 1983), she has exhibited internationally, and her work has been included in the collections of the Musée National des Beaux-Arts d'Alger and the Barjeel Art Foundation. Her semi-abstract work explores the tensions between the visible and the invisible, combining enigmatic figures, calligraphy, sand and gold leaf in a language at the crossroads of Berber heritage and modern trends. In the 1990s, marked by the "black decade" and the suicide of her friend, the poet Safia Ketou, she stopped painting.
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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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