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Lot description
Jellal BEN ABDALLAH (Tunis 1921-2017) Women at the Toilet, circa 1970 Miniature, watercolor and gold leaf on cardboard. 14 x 11 cm Signed lower right in Arabic and Latin letters ben abdallah. *** Mixed media on cardboard with gold highlights, signed lower right in Arabic and Latin (5½ × 4⅜ in.) The authenticity of this work has been kindly confirmed by Amin BOUKER. Provenance Private collection, since 1973 Bibliography Amin Bouker, Jellal Ben Abdallah, sous l'artifice, la simplicité, Cérès Éditions, reproduced p. 588. The composition unfolds an enclosed, harmonious feminine universe: four women gathered in a Sidi Bou Saïd interior with zellige walls, while through the window the silhouette of Djebel Bou Kornine silently anchors the scene in the Tunisian landscape. In the foreground, a kohl bottle and its silver dish - emblematic pieces of traditional goldsmithing - accompany the suspended gesture of one of the figures; Ben Abdallah treats them with the same meticulousness applied to faces and costumes, elevating each object to the status of a subject in its own right. But the toilet scene here is no more than a pretext. By bringing together four figures in a rigorously balanced composition, Ben Abdallah discreetly summons the four cardinal points and the four seasons, turning this Tunisian interior into an image of the ordered world - a cosmos à l'antique, where the everyday gesture reaches the universal and the eternal.