Abdelkébir Rabi’

A complete monograph on a major artist and representative of Moroccan modernity.

Abdelkébir Rabi' was born in 1944 amidst the heights of Boulemane, Morocco's highest town. After training at the École Normale in Fez, he taught art and aesthetics in high school and then at the university until 2003. Born into a line of imams, Abdelkébir Rabi' challenges the anti-iconic principles he has inherited, seeking to reconcile artistic fervour and spiritual fulfilment. Rabi' began to paint in a figurative style and was gradually moving towards an abstract painting in the 1970s.

Inspired as much by the grandeur of the Middle Atlas mountains as by artists such as Marc Couturier and Antoni Tàpies, Abdelkébir Rabi's work is a universal, meditative and contemplative quest. It unfolds in an infinite array of blacks of varying degrees of opacity, symbolising the interplay between light and shadow, figuration and abstraction, fullness and emptiness, the seen and the unseen. Each black line, often executed in a single gesture, contributes to create a pure and profound work, imbued with spirit uality. Rabi' sees art as "a personal matter", and his solitary approach underlines his dedication to art.

This detailed monograph enriches the "Archives des Arts" collection directed by Brahim Alaoui and dedicated to contemporary and modern North African artists such as Mohamed Hamidi, Farid Belkahia, Ghada Amer and Mohamed Melehi.