Abdelkader Laâraj was born in Casablanca in 1950.
A self-taught painter and sculptor, Abdelkader Laâraj took his first steps in the world of art alongside key figures from the Casablanca group, notably Mohamed Melehi and Mohamed Chabâa, whom he assisted before forming a deep friendship with them. His journey, enriched by this apprenticeship and numerous travels, led him to develop a unique pictorial language, where abstraction and figuration meet in a subtle interplay of patterns and colors.
Abdelkader Laâraj's work resembles a daydream in perpetual metamorphosis, a suspended world where light shapes the forms. The female body is one of the artist’s major concerns, which he paints with vivid colors, using a palette where the lines of the body merge with the brilliance of the colors.
From his long proximity to Mohamed Melehi and Mohamed Chabâa, Abdelkader Laâraj has retained a perfect mastery of cellulosic painting, which he uses to give form to shapes that this technique imbues with added nuances. The chromatic richness invites a retinal pleasure that the artist seems to wish for.
The works of Abdelkader Laâraj are part of several public and private collections and have been the subject of numerous exhibitions in Morocco, as well as internationally, notably in France, Italy, Canada, and the United States.
The artist lives and works in Casablanca.