In Mahjoub Ben Bella's paintings, the colors are sometimes shimmering, At just 20 years old, Mahjoub Ben Bella settled in the North. He remained in this adopted region until the end of his life. He added a touch of color to the northern landscape, illuminating it with his sunny roots.
As he liked to say, he was accompanied by gray skies, but warmed by the warmth of the people. His palette, bright and warm, referencing the warm, ochre earth of Africa, meets that of the North, so beloved by Matisse and Delacroix.
Between East and West, these colors, drawn from both shores of the Mediterranean, intersect and converge. They embrace on the canvas to offer us a captivating dialogue.
This line, fluid and discontinuous, sometimes painted, sometimes drawn, sometimes engraved like Ariadne's thread, will always be present in the artist's works, as if to show him the way through the immense labyrinth that is painting.
Omnipresent at the heart of Ben Bella's production, the line here comes from a heritage: that of Arabic calligraphy.
Deployed in his work, the writing is no longer legible; the painter sings on the canvas a spontaneous, gestural, and emotional language. Accompanied by color, the line gradually comes to life on the canvas. The brush, an extension of his hand, dances on the canvas.
The choreographed line, sometimes slow, sometimes energetic, contorts itself on the canvas during a long musical trance. Both haunting and captivating, the score thus created on the canvas declaims an incantatory chant.
While abstraction categorizes most of his work, his lines still sometimes seem figurative and sketch mysterious dancing figures.