Mahjoub Ben Bella Algerian-French, 1946-2020

Mahjoub Ben Bella was a multi-talented artist who produced paintings on canvas, paper, wood and other materials, as well as monumental works in public spaces.

He was part of what was known as abstract expressionism or lyrical abstraction, a movement that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Algeria in 1946, he trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Oran. From 1965 to 1970, he pursued his studies in France at the École des Beaux-Arts de Tourcoing under Claude Vicente, who was his director at the Beaux-Arts in Oran. From 1970 to 1975, he continued his training at the École Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and settled permanently in Tourcoing in 1975, where he played an active role in the regional and international art scene. His painting draws on the same sources as the great names of modern art, such as Mark Tobey, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Henri Michaux, Jean Dubuffet, Georges Mathieu and many other artists who found graphic resources in the cultures and writings of the East and Far East, in order to enrich their relationship with the space of the painting. Like them, and inspired by the great masters such as Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh and Delacroix, he gave abstract art new inclinations, and his painting, full of variations and vibrations of lines and colours, is immediately identifiable.

His work can be found in numerous private and public collections in France and abroad.