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100 - M'hamed ISSIAKHEM (Taboudoucht 1928 - Algiers 1985) Untitled…
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Estimate €2,500 - €3,500
Sale commission
Description
M'hamed ISSIAKHEM (Taboudoucht 1928 - Algiers 1985) Untitled Indian ink drawing 20 x 18.5 cm Signed lower right Issakhiem *** India ink on paper, signed lower right (7⅞ × 7¼ in.) The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the artist's family. A major figure in modern Algerian painting, M'hamed Issiakhem was marked throughout his life by a seminal tragedy: as a child, a grenade tore three fingers off his right hand. Rather than seeing this as an obstacle, he turned it into the driving force behind a graphic practice of singular intensity; the imprint of this mutilated hand, literally printed on some of his works, has become one of the most recognisable signs in his plastic vocabulary. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Algiers and then in Paris, Issiakhem pursued a sustained career as a press cartoonist alongside his painting. A regular contributor to El Moudjahid and Algérie Actualité, he produced hundreds of political cartoons and caricatures in which his incisive, uncompromising style reflected the struggles of independent Algeria. This dual practice - easel painting and press cartooning - is not anecdotal: it was in the press that he honed his economy of gesture, his ability to say everything in a few lines. In the present drawing, this mastery is fully expressed. Indian ink - the medium of his training as a draughtsman - reveals a power that oil paint sometimes attenuates: the gesture is naked, irreversible, the fingerprint of Issiakhem's hand rawer, truer than anywhere else.
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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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