Abdelkébir Rabi'

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. 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 spirituality. Rabi' sees art as "a personal matter", and his solitary approach underlines his dedication to art.