Tahar Ben Jelloun was born in Fez in 1947.
One of the best-known and most widely translated writers in the world, Tahar Ben Jelloun has also had a longstanding relationship with the visual arts. Firstly, through his writings on various Moroccan painters and sculptors such as Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Melehi, Mohamed Chabâa, Fouad Bellamine, Chaïbia Talal, Jilali Gharbaoui, Mohamed Kacimi and on several foreign artists such as Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Claudio Bravo, Mimmo Rotella... Secondly, through the attraction he has always had for painting, an activity he pursues with pleasure, as a counterpoint to his profession as a writer.
There is a correlation between Tahar Ben Jelloun's profession as a writer and his passion for painting. The man needs these two activities to find, no doubt, a kind of balance, even a vital recreation, in his novels, which often take hold of the darker side of man. In his preface to the exhibition catalog, he explains how his activities as a writer and painter have become consubstantial with his equilibrium. “Each time, I explain how I go from writing about what I call “the pain of the world” to its “light”. I've often written about injustice, loneliness and abandonment. But I needed to explore the other side of this dark universe. That's where painting, as I like it, came to me as a matter of course, like an old acquaintance, a friend lighting my way”. He adds: “I started painting to make people forget the dark side of the world I was writing about”.
The canvases exhibited at L'Atelier 21, “painted in Morocco, under the sun of Marrakech, with its superb light and pure air, have something different from those done under the gray skies of Paris”, as Tahar Ben Jelloun describes them, all exuding a gentle enchantment and communicating a retinal joy. These canvases reflect the pleasure, the greedy happiness, that their author had in painting them. Tahar Ben Jelloun has inscribed phrases, often poetic flashes, around the edges of these canvases, adding to the pleasure of the eyes the intensity of the impact of words.
Tahar Ben Jelloun's paintings are part of numerous private and public collections, including the Yannick and Ben Jakober Foundation (Spain), the San Salvatore In Lauro Museum (Italy), the Institut du Monde Arabe (France) and the Villa Harris Museum in Tangier (Morocco).
Tahar Ben Jelloun lives between Paris, Tangier and Marrakech.