Abdallah Benanteur
1931 (Mostaganem, Algérie) / 2017 (Ivry-sur-Seine)
Artist's gallery
In the famous novel of the year 1000 The Tale of Gengi, between chapters XVI and XVII, Murasaki Shikibu makes Prince Gengi disappear into the clouds, obliterating his entry into religion and his upcoming death. Like the Japanese prince, the Algerian painter Benanteur did not totally disappear at the end of 2017 but, like the chosen ones who seek to annihilate themselves in God, his painting has melted into light behind the clouds. As in Sufi mysticism, the painful vision of a world of high thought that this loner has never stopped painting all his life, from the desert to the garden, aspires to nothingness. Of fragile health, the young Abdallah discovered painting in bed (like Matisse), taking advantage of his pensive readings by confronting them with the splendors of Algerian nature. Befriending, at the age of fifteen, Mohammed Khadda, self-taught and future leader of the school of Painters of the Sign (to which Benanteur will remain a stranger), the young man, who has not yet taken the name of Benanteur and is called Ben Antar - like the pre-Islamic hero -, will paint in the ardent company of his friend in the vicinity of Mostaganem, at the foot of the Dahra, this tormented limestone massif of the Little Atlas that goes down into the sea. Perhaps because, as Assia Djebar remarked, "childhood ends too soon in the countries of the sun," Benanteur will keep an infinite nostalgia for his young years all his life.
Artist's gallery
In the famous novel of the year 1000 The Tale of Gengi, between chapters XVI and XVII, Murasaki Shikibu makes Prince Gengi disappear into the clouds, obliterating his entry into religion and his upcoming death. Like the Japanese prince, the Algerian painter Benanteur did not totally disappear at the end of 2017 but, like the chosen ones who seek to annihilate themselves in God, his painting has melted into light behind the clouds. As in Sufi mysticism, the painful vision of a world of high thought that this loner has never stopped painting all his life, from the desert to the garden, aspires to nothingness. Of fragile health, the young Abdallah discovered painting in bed (like Matisse), taking advantage of his pensive readings by confronting them with the splendors of Algerian nature. Befriending, at the age of fifteen, Mohammed Khadda, self-taught and future leader of the school of Painters of the Sign (to which Benanteur will remain a stranger), the young man, who has not yet taken the name of Benanteur and is called Ben Antar - like the pre-Islamic hero -, will paint in the ardent company of his friend in the vicinity of Mostaganem, at the foot of the Dahra, this tormented limestone massif of the Little Atlas that goes down into the sea. Perhaps because, as Assia Djebar remarked, "childhood ends too soon in the countries of the sun," Benanteur will keep an infinite nostalgia for his young years all his life.
