His works have experienced wide dissemination and traffic, arousing many speculations and strong demand, to the point of making him one of the most famous artists in Beaubourg and many galleries. However, detached from the logics of profit and enrichment, he has always remained faithful to his desire to maintain his paintings close to the public, using them as a means of shaking up the established concepts.
The press -We have so much hoped and expected and the living art center in the city of Tunis (Dar El-Founoun in the Belvedere) did it. We will finally have the right to an exhibition dedicated to the Tunisian artist the late Jaber Mahjoub. We would have liked it to be done during his lifetime, but better late than never and we can sulk the opportunity to discover in situ the work of this exceptional artist. The exhibition introduced “Le Monde Pour Tous” will be inaugurated today on Saturday May 3 at 5:00 p.m.
Jaber Mahjoub is one of those who do not rely, singular, authentic and elusive. He defined himself, himself, as a “direct” and instinctive artist, offering most of his paintings from the day before to always start the next day again. Baker at his beginnings, singer, then boxer, speaking several languages (including some of his invention!) And player of a three -string oud (“his final lute” as he said). Those who have had the chance to meet his way speak of an engaging, spontaneous, jovial and very expressive character. Traits that are reflected in his work, joyful, colorful, full of humor and fantasy. His universe is unique, identifiable by its naive treatment, its primary colors and its symbols: birds, cats, donkeys, cows, camels, fish, hearts, inscriptions of figures and very often humorous words …
Dispersed, instinctive and multiple to its image, its plastic expression deploys, spontaneously, through different mediums and other techniques: gouaches, acrylics, drawings, sculptures in plastered or papier mache bands.
He was one of those who liked to sow joy around them, yet man has not always had easy life. Born in 1938 in Msaken, he had a difficult childhood that did not open the doors of the school to him: his father, already elderly at the birth of Jaber, left the family home when he was only 2 years old, for mountain lives. At the age of three, Jaber lost his mother. He is placed with his uncle in Sfax where he was not really well treated. At 10, he moved to Tunis to live with his mother’s family. Then at fifteen, he started working, in La Goulette, with a Jewish baker. At 18, he embarked for Marseille and then in Nice where he will exercise his baker. In 1960, he left for Paris and stood out with his buns and other pastries in the shape of fish, birds, flowers, etc. He later became a boxer before improvising actor-singer, sometimes exercising his talents on the forecourt of Beaubourg (we will also call the “king of Beaubourg”). From 1976 to 1979, he stayed in Canada, Morocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia before returning to Paris.
-He became known as a painter and sculptor by exhibiting his works in large spaces, especially at the American Center for Artists in Paris in 1977, at the Alif Ba gallery in Casablanca in 1983, then in the beef eye in Paris in 1986. That same year, he also participated in the Biennale de la Havana in Cuba. In 1971, he obtained the first prize of the Plainfield’s Annual Festival of Art in New York.
His work has received international recognition integrating naive art museum collections in large capitals such as Berlin, Chicago, Amsterdam, Lausanne and Brussels, after having drawn the attention of the famous artist and theorist Jean Dubuffet.
The works of Jaber Mahjoub have experienced wide dissemination and traffic, arousing many speculation and high demand, to the point of making him one of the most famous artists in Beaubourg and many galleries. However, detached from the logics of profit and enrichment, he has always remained faithful to his desire to maintain his paintings close to the public, using them as a means of shaking up the established concepts. He wanted to be beyond any artistic standard, painting by instinct, easily standing out of his productions which he could generously offer according to his meetings.
And meetings he made it, that with Coluche who was a customer of the Parisian bakery in which he had worked in a period of his life, with the great boxer Mohamed Ali Clay, with Jacques Chirac before he became president. Seduced by its originality, the latter would have even helped him to exhibit in a Parisian high place in Brut. It was in 1997 and the exhibition entitled “Jaber International exposed” was a real success.
The artist with an impressive and atypical journey lived very modestly, in Paris, this city he loved so much and to which he “consecrated” a good number of his works. “A poor artist whose works have value on the market is the equation with which a talented artist cannot afford to live. However, the artist, whose pages on the Internet are full of auction ads on his works, did not care about it, or let’s say that he knew it, but sometimes he made you want, and sometimes donated his works, causing shocks among those who received them and those who were fascinated by them, so he chose to take risks, to manipulate this situation and to impose a new law of the game. art and who speculated there. He made fun of everyone. He controlled the temperature of the exchanges with a kind of black humor and sarcasm, in bitterness and laughter. Whether Tunisian or European, Jaber knew how to laugh at all of them. “Write Fetah Benameur (in” Unpublished breath “) Who was able to meet him during his only Tunisian exhibition in 2001 at the Corniche of Monastir.
The tribute exhibition “Le Monde pour tous” will continue until May 31, 2025. A meeting around the artist’s journey will also be scheduled later, announce the organizers.
