Friday, October 31, 2008

MAHJOUB BEN BELLA : TOTEM

Mahjoub Ben Bella was born in 1946 in Maghnia (Algeria). After some studies at the Fine Arts School in Oran (Algeria), he moved to the Fine Arts School of Tourcoing in the North of France and then at the Fine Arts School in Paris before to go eventually to the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.

He is the painter of Lille and of the North of France and is widely considered in this region where he painted 12 kilometers of cobble stones of the infamous hard road of the Paris-Roubaix cycle race. His repute is now international and his work sells everywhere notably in the Emirates where his style illustrates the meeting of two words in a pacific way, the North and the South, the East and the West of the Mediterranean. Ben Bella's work creates a remarkable fusion between signs based on Arabic calligraphy, and Abstract Expressionism in European painting.

This painting is an oil on canvas painted in 2005 and measures 76¾ x 51 1/8in. (195 x 130 cm.) . It was offered on auction at Chrisitie's in October 2008 and reached the low level of its estimate, i.e. $ 40,000.

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