Chakib Slitine

“Spirit of synthesis, dream power, incantation and smile …, plastic meditation”   René Passeron  [1]

Chakib Slitine is a painter and lithographer, born in 1948 in the medina of Marrakech. In 1964, he founded and presides the Association of Young Moroccan Painters (AJPM) which organizes since then, individual and collective exhibitions of Moroccan painters. A year later, Slitine made her first solo show in Marrakech at the age of 16. In 1967, he went to study in France, where he graduated from the Sorbonne Institute of Art and Archeology in Paris. He joined the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied with the painters and lithographers of the Paris School , Gustave Singier and Georges Dayez. Slitine then confronts lithography, which makes him – in the 1970s – “one of the few Moroccan painters to have turned to this technique” [2] according to the daily newspaper L’Opinion . “Among all these young painters, Slitine stands out in particular. He embodies all the problems of young Moroccan painting and announces his brilliant future. Of a surrealistic tendency, Slitine is perhaps the best Moroccan painter who explores the subconscious of this youth ” [3] . To his credit, he has six solo exhibitions and numerous group exhibitions including France, Morocco, Belgium, Spain, Egypt and England. He taught Egyptology at the School of Art and Communication in Paris ( EAC) and at the School of Arts and Culture Trades ( ICART ). He currently lives between Paris and Marrakech.

Statement

“Today, back in my homeland, I devote myself exclusively to my artistic activity, drawing my inspiration from the red city, Marrakech, and blending local cultural heritage and madness of my imagination My universe explores so much the pangs of the unconscious , that the taboos of society: death, women, sexuality, magic or witchcraft. The Expressionist and Surrealist imaginary of my works is composed of dislocated and viscous bodies, women who are still pregnant, even dead, falls of the damned, lost fetuses, scattered flies. Where we will see and admire the creation of a delirious order with such and such an aberrant figure, is the mark of an imaginary who takes the wide and liberties with all summations of the memory. Through and beyond my work, I denounce injustice, loneliness, the lack of freedom. “

 

[1] Passeron, René, Preface to the Biren Gallery exhibition, 6 °, Paris, 1970

[2] Daily Opinion , 1975

[3] Arab News, Bi-monthly bulletin, political, economic and social, 2nd year, January 1, 1970, n ° 22