PORTRAIT.- The Arab World Institute presents the first retrospective in Paris of this “writing weaver” artist, all in warm colors and poetic waves, best known for his art of political contact.
When the Institute of the Arab World offers a retrospective to an artist in the almost secret rooms imagined by the architect Jean Nouvel, his place immediately arises in the chessboard of diplomatic relations between France and his country, Morocco in occurrence, between this Maghreb country and other countries in the Arab world. Mehdi Qotbi, 73, is unknown to the general public in France, but well known to the spheres of power – he received the medal of Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit from President Macron in April – and to the institutions which, from the Picasso Museum to the Giacometti Foundation, exhibited through him in Morocco. Man is at the heart of a whole web of relationships, woven over the years with care and stubbornness.
And in fact, even for this retrospective at the IMA, the dream of every artist from the Arab world, there is a particular solemnity that goes beyond the framework of the workshop. « There are works that are universes. The gaze plunges into it…
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Morocco
