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Lot description
Jellal BEN ABDALLAH (Tunis 1921-2017) Woman with bird and jasmine Mixed media and gold on paper pasted on cardboard 17 x 16 cm Signed lower right in Arabic and Latin letters ben abdallah. *** Mixed media and gold on paper laid on cardboard, signed lower right in Arabic and Latin (6¾ × 6¼ in.) The authenticity of this work has been kindly confirmed by Amin BOUKER. Provenance Private collection, since 1973 This motif is one of the most emblematic of Ben Abdallah's work, and he proposed countless variations of it - in all sizes and techniques - like returning to a founding image, endlessly renewed and never exhausted. Jellal Ben Abdallah is one of the tutelary figures of the Tunis School. Deeply attached to Sidi Bou Saïd, he exhibited his paintings from the age of sixteen. After taking part in the Salon Tunisien (1942, 1945), he settled in Montparnasse in 1952, while receiving commissions from the Tunisian government for decorative ceramic panels in public buildings. A painter, ceramist, mosaicist and set designer for the Tunis theater, his multi-faceted artistic practice was nourished by the tradition of oriental miniatures. Around 1970, he turned to more ambitious compositions, using acrylic enhanced with gold and silver. His language remained hieratic and precise - stylized faces evoking Egyptian goddesses, women in traditional Tunisian costume, interior scenes adorned with woodwork and ironwork - but gained in monumentality and chromatic richness. Seated women remain his favorite motif, providing an opportunity to meticulously render costumes, jewelry, musical instruments and domestic objects in all their nobility. He has been exhibiting in Tunisia and abroad since 1939.