Fouad Bellamine: Fragments de vie

On the occasion of a painful autobiographical episode, Fouad Bellamine lacerates a large painting in a fit of rage. “Fouad Bellamine slashed the canvas like a self-mutilator attacking his own skin. For he is one with it,” writes Latifa Serghini in the preface to the exhibition catalog. Shredded with a box cutter, the painting was rolled up and kept in a hidden corner of the painter's apartment on Rue du Caire in Rabat.

The artist was never able to turn the page on this canvas, but he repeatedly postponed the moment of looking at it again. 25 years later, Bellamine gave new life to the lacerated work by isolating and cutting out the intact parts. He entitled this work brought back to life: Fragments d'une déchirure (Fragments of a tear). But this did not appease the artist, who decided to paint a whole series of works, as if to ward off the demons of the executed work once and for all. He tells Latifa Serghini: “It's a rebirth, a resurrection we're talking about. It's a corpse, a coffin to which I'm giving new life, at a period of maturity in my work when I'm questioning the moments of my pictorial journey, be they minimalist or expressionist. They are, in fact, fragments of painting.”