From left to right: Aly Ben Salem, Portrait of a woman, Circa 1950s; Abdelkader Guermaz, Métamorphose, Circa 1974; Abdelkader Guermaz, Sans titre 3, 1965; Abdelkader Guermaz, Dunes Perverses, 1978; Abdelkader Guermaz, Sans titre, Circa 1964; Abdelkader Guermaz, Sans titre, 1964; Abdelkader Guermaz, Sans titre, 1965; Abdelkader Guermaz, Les Arbres, 1978
Booth M6
Elmarsa is proud to present two foremost North African modernists, Aly Ben Salem (1910-2001) and Abdelkader Guermaz (1919-1996) in booth M6 for the fourth consecutive year at Art Dubai Modern 2017. The exhibition offers insight into the development of twentieth-century North African art while also shedding light on how this chapter fits into the wider art history of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA).
Like many of their regional peers, neither Ben Salem nor Guermaz received the recognition that they deserved during their lifetimes and are only being rediscovered more recently thanks to an expanding international art market. Similarly, our understanding of the modernist period in the region remains in its early stages as this art history is still being gathered by a few persistent scholars facing challenges ranging from the destruction wrought by war and revolution to incomplete or inaccessible archives. The francophone Maghreb chapter sometimes suffers by being left out of English language histories of Arab modernism, therefore, Elmarsa's exhibition attempts to draw some initial links between Ben Salem and Guermaz's practices with other MENASA modernists.
