Abdelkader Guermaz (Mascara 1916 - Paris 1996)

Labyrinth of dreams Oil on panel 34,7x71,9cm Signed lower right, countersigned, located and titled on the back This work has been included in the artist's catalog raisonné under number 1039 Recognized as one of the major non-figurative painters of the second half of the 20th century, Abdelkader Guermaz, born in 1919 in Mascara (Algeria), who died in Paris in 1996, was, along with Khadda (1930-1991), Benanteur (1931) and Aksouh (1934), one of the founders of modern Algerian painting with an abstract tendency, but also one of the masters of the New School of Paris. After graduating from the Oran School of Fine Arts, where he was a student, he shared the figurative conception of the Painters of Poetic Reality from 1940 to 1955. Noticed for his precocious talent by Robert Martin, his paintings will rub shoulders at the Colline gallery in Oran with those of Algerian and European artists from Algeria, but also those of Picasso to Bernard Buffet. He was invited to participate in the 1951 Biennial of Menton. Around 1955 he gradually turned to abstraction, like other painters of his generation attentive to the example set by the Parisian avant-garde. He settled in Paris in the fall of 1961. Without being able to speak of an "Oranese group", Guermaz's meetings with Benanteur and Khadda, Michel-Georges Bernard tells us, allowed them to develop their common and diverse search for a new writing. Guermaz maintained contact with Algeria, participating in the exhibition of Algerian painters in Algiers on November 1, 1963, followed by the exhibition of the same name in 1964 at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, then at the UNAP exhibitions of 1964 and 1974 in Algiers. Imbued with Western culture, but remaining an oriental, Guermaz will engage at the end of the 60s in a double pictorial and spiritual approach in search of the light that he will reflect and reflect in his work. Soon signs will emerge from the white canvas, punctual spots of color, layered planes, reliefs, "landscapes" that will gradually take on a "symbolic" character. These "landscapes" will then be inscribed in another relationship to the world. He will celebrate his Unity, within which are indissolubly linked two worlds, the spiritual world and the sensitive world, according to the conception of Sufism that he shares. In his increasingly refined works, the spirit will gradually prevail over matter. He will receive the support of the Entremonde gallery for nearly ten years until 1981, and will be invited to participate in international exhibitions, in Tokyo in 1972, in Teheran in 1974, in Tunis in 1980, in London in 1981, and will create cartoons of tapestry for the airport of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Put in full light his work will obtain the recognition of the public and the critic. As a testimony to his fame, Guermaz's work will enter public collections, the Fine Arts museums of Algiers and Oran, in Paris the National Fund and the Municipal Fund of Contemporary Art, the Algerian Cultural Center, and the Arab World Institute, then at the Pompidou Center, as well as in a large number of private collections in Europe, Canada, the United States, Iran, Japan and the Middle East.