BENANTEUR - A PASSION TO SHARE. PAINTINGS, 1955-2011.

From 18 May to 23 July 2016 - Galerie Claude Lemand

  • Benanteur, Le Jardin de Saadi (The Garden of Saadi)

    Le Jardin de Saadi (The Garden of Saadi), 1984. Polyptych, oil on canvas, 95 x 120 cm. Collections of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah. © The Estate of Abdallah Benanteur. Courtesy of Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

  • Benanteur, L’Aube.

    L'Aube, 1997. Oil on canvas, 140 x 140 cm. Donation Claude & France Lemand. Museum, Institut du monde arabe, Paris. © Abdallah Benanteur. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

  • Benanteur, Ouessantais.

    Ouessantais, 2011. Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm. Private Collection. © Abdallah Benanteur. Courtesy Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

BENANTEUR - A PASSION TO SHARE. PAINTINGS, 1955-2011.

Claude Lemand.

Born in 1931 in Mostaghanem, Abdallah Benanteur was brought up in an Algerian family and cul­tural envi­ron­ment, specif­i­cally enthralled by writing and illu­mi­nated manuscripts, by mystic Muslim poetry, by Andalusian music and songs. In 1953, he set­tled down in Paris, which he trans­formed into his own cap­ital of life, cre­ation and inter­na­tional outreach. He was influ­enced by the great mas­ters of the museums in France and Europe, yet he man­aged to create his own per­sonal œuvre, pro­ducing lyrical land­scapes infused with the light of his Mediterranean home­land and that of his adopted Brittany, as well as land­scapes that are some­times abstract or dotted with sil­hou­ettes of people walking.

His work is the reflec­tion of an ide­alist, humanist, and uni­ver­salist vision, born of two con­cep­tions of the world that influ­enced him suc­ces­sively, and whose cat­e­gories informed him pow­er­fully, for they cor­re­spond to his human, aes­thetic and social ideal : the Sufi move­ment he knew as a child and as an ado­les­cent in Algeria (poems, songs, pro­ces­sions, cal­lig­raphy and illu­mi­nated books) and the utopian com­mu­nist move­ment that influ­enced him in the fifties in France, both of them close to that Far Eastern Buddhism, whose poets and painters he knows and admires so much (wisdom, poetry and painting : ideal land­scapes and man’s modest and har­mo­nious place within nature). Benanteur would have liked to live and work in a country and during a time where that human, aes­thetic and social ideal still endured : e.g. the late Middle Ages in Europe or the pin­nacle of Arab-Andalusian civ­i­liza­tion.

Translated from French by Ann Cremin.


See Publications. Two Books are avail­able:

- BENANTEUR, Monograph Volume 1. Paintings.

- BENANTEUR, Monograph Volume 2. Graphic Works

Copyright © Galerie Claude Lemand 2012.

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