Fêla Kefi Leroux Carthage, b. 1944

Fêla Kefi Leroux is a Franco-Tunisian artist born in Carthage, Tunisia, whose artistic path unfolds between Tunis and Paris from the early 1960s onward. Trained at a pivotal moment in the history of modern art in Tunisia, she graduated with highest honors from the Decorative Arts section of the École des Beaux-Arts in Tunis, where she studied under major figures such as Safia Farhat, Mahmoud Shili, and Abdelaziz Gorgi. She was awarded the Excellence Prize by Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, marking early institutional recognition of her work.

In the mid-1960s, Fêla Kefi Leroux continued her training in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, specializing in Mural Arts and Interior Architecture. She was a resident at the Cité Internationale des Arts from 1966 to 1970, a formative period during which she deepened her engagement with decorative arts, spatial practices, and material experimentation.

In 1966, she participated in Tendances et Confrontations at the First World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar, under the patronage of President Léopold Sédar Senghor. As one of the first Tunisian women artists to take part in this major transnational event, her presence situates her practice within a broader network of artists, thinkers, and cultural actors engaged in questions of modernity, identity, and postcolonial aesthetics — as documented in Embracing Blackness at the First World Festival of Black Arts, an article by Beya Othmani.

From the 1970s onward, Fêla Kefi Leroux established a sustained practice in Paris while maintaining strong ties to Tunisia. She pursued a continuous engagement with drawing, notably at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, alongside her work in painting and ceramics. Her experience in interior decoration, including work at Madame Brunau’s studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in 1968, and later with Mercier Frères under the direction of André Mercier, played a crucial role in shaping her attention to surface, structure, and the relationship between image and space.

Across decades, her work has developed as a deeply humanist exploration of the figure. Her portraits and nudes, characterized by restraint and sensitivity, articulate a quiet yet persistent inquiry into presence, memory, and interiority. Light and shadow are treated not as effects, but as compositional forces that shape the emotional resonance of her images.

The renewed attention to her work is closely linked to recent art historical research, notably that of Jessica Gerschultz, including her publication Decorative Arts of the Tunisian École, whose cover features Kefi Leroux’s ceramic L’Agriculture (1964).

In 2026, a selection of drawings from the 1960s will be presented in Museum Arnhem Goes Naked (14 March – 20 September). following Partisans of the Nude at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York.

Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in several public and private collections, notably the Barjeel Art Foundation.