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拍品专文
Born in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), Indonesia, in 1918 to a Tunisian father and an Indonesian mother, Hatem El Mekki moved to Tunisia in 1924 following his first visit to his father’s homeland. He was educated at the Lycée Carnot in Tunis before receiving a government scholarship to study in Paris, where he resided at the Cité Internationale des Arts during the 1930s.
El Mekki returned to Tunisia permanently in 1951, where he began to develop his distinctive style. His work reflects a life shaped by profound historical events, merging his formal academic training with the Indonesian technique of batik textile printing. Employing abstracted forms, rhythmic lines, and a palette of warm, often intense colours, El Mekki produced compositions that conveyed both vitality and severity. His paintings frequently engaged with themes of hardship, including the realities of French colonial rule, with particular attention given to the expressive power of the human figure. El Mekki remained a central figure in Tunisian modern art until his death in Carthage in 2003.
El Mekki’s Portrait de Gorgi (1952) depicts Abdelaziz Gorgi (1928–2008), one of the leading figures of modern Tunisian art. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Tunis and later in Paris, Gorgi became a founding member of the École de Tunis, the movement that sought to merge modernist aesthetics with local traditions, thereby shaping a distinctly Tunisian artistic identity. By the early 1950s, Gorgi was already emerging as a pivotal presence within the country’s cultural landscape, a trajectory that would later include his long tenure as professor at the Institut supérieur des Beaux-Arts in Tunis and his establishment of influential galleries such as Galerie Gorgi. El Mekki’s portrait of his contemporary not only signals the close ties and mutual recognition among Tunisian artists of the period but also documents the vibrant artistic milieu in which modern Tunisian art was being actively defined.
El Mekki returned to Tunisia permanently in 1951, where he began to develop his distinctive style. His work reflects a life shaped by profound historical events, merging his formal academic training with the Indonesian technique of batik textile printing. Employing abstracted forms, rhythmic lines, and a palette of warm, often intense colours, El Mekki produced compositions that conveyed both vitality and severity. His paintings frequently engaged with themes of hardship, including the realities of French colonial rule, with particular attention given to the expressive power of the human figure. El Mekki remained a central figure in Tunisian modern art until his death in Carthage in 2003.
El Mekki’s Portrait de Gorgi (1952) depicts Abdelaziz Gorgi (1928–2008), one of the leading figures of modern Tunisian art. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Tunis and later in Paris, Gorgi became a founding member of the École de Tunis, the movement that sought to merge modernist aesthetics with local traditions, thereby shaping a distinctly Tunisian artistic identity. By the early 1950s, Gorgi was already emerging as a pivotal presence within the country’s cultural landscape, a trajectory that would later include his long tenure as professor at the Institut supérieur des Beaux-Arts in Tunis and his establishment of influential galleries such as Galerie Gorgi. El Mekki’s portrait of his contemporary not only signals the close ties and mutual recognition among Tunisian artists of the period but also documents the vibrant artistic milieu in which modern Tunisian art was being actively defined.