Galerie Claude Lemand

DIALOGUES Algiers-Paris. Modern and Contemporary Artists (1959-2025)
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Featured Artists:
– BAYA
– Abdallah Benanteur
– Djamila Bent Mohamed
– Zoulikha Bouabdellah
– Halida Boughriet
– Abdelkader Guermaz
– M’hamed Issiakhem
– Mohammed Khadda
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Claude Lemand :

Moderne Art Fair 2026 show­cases dia­logues between Algiers and Paris, through a selec­tion of works by eight modern and con­tem­po­rary artists, chosen from among the twenty Algerian artists we admire and who inspire us. This spot­light is fully aligned with a 2026 edi­tion res­o­lutely focused on dis­covery, inter­cul­tural dia­logue, and high­lighting major inter­na­tional art scenes. This dia­logue reaf­firms more than ever Moderne Art Fair’s role as an essen­tial event during Paris’s inter­na­tional art week.

Bringing together four women and four men, this selec­tion includes emblem­atic fig­ures such as BAYA, Abdallah Benanteur, Djamila Bent Mohamed, Abdelkader Guermaz, M’hamed Issiakhem, Mohammed Khadda and the two con­tem­po­rary artists Zoulikha Bouabdellah and Halida Boughriet, who bear wit­ness to the great cre­ativity of three gen­er­a­tions of artists, despite the tragedies of his­tory, and to the rich­ness of col­lec­tive and per­sonal artistic exchanges between the two shores of the Mediterranean.

Our pas­sion for the works of great Algerian artists dates back to our encounter in 1987 with the sub­lime work of Abdallah Benanteur, and this small exhi­bi­tion seeks to res­onate with the legacy he left us through his cycle Les Élus (The Chosen Ones), cur­rently on dis­play alongside Claude Monet’s Water Lilies at Les Franciscaines in Deauville.

DIALOGUES Algiers-Paris wishes to bear wit­ness to the fra­ter­nity and sol­i­darity that bound Algerian and French artists and intel­lec­tuals during the most dif­fi­cult years of their shared his­tory, a fra­ter­nity and sol­i­darity that con­tinue to this day. This is our man­i­festo of uni­versal fra­ter­nity through Arts and Culture, between the peo­ples of both shores, between all humankind on the planet.

The works of DIALOGUES Algiers-Paris are a song of the pain of the col­o­nized Algerian land and people, a song of uprooted Algerian cul­ture and iden­tity, but also and above all, a song of freedom and hope, of the renewal of artistic and cul­tural cre­ativity, and the announce­ment of a nec­es­sary and long-awaited renais­sance. They are an expres­sion of the love that all artists have for Algeria, those at home and those abroad, all these cre­ators of the dias­pora who can say, like Abdallah Benanteur: “Al­geria is within me; only my feet have left it; my spirit con­stantly wan­ders among my people.”

The Algiers-Paris dia­logue also reveals the artistic, cul­tural, and human impor­tance of the cos­mopolitan Parisian scene, a place of dia­logue for artists from around the world in the decades fol­lowing the end of the Second World War, a period marked by the ques­tioning of the colo­nial system and Eurocentrism ; a cen­tral role that remains rel­e­vant today.

We are delighted that since 2000, works by leading modern and con­tem­po­rary Algerian artists have been grad­u­ally entering the col­lec­tions of major French and inter­na­tional museums. Given their remark­able quality, it was high time.