M'hamed Issiakhem (Amazigh: Mḥemmed Isyaxem, Arabic: محمد اسياخم), born 17 June 1928 in Taboudoucht, Algeria, and died 1 December 1985 in Algeria, Algerian, representative of modern painting in Algeria is a painter. He spent his childhood in Relizane, where in 1943 he handled a grenade taken from an American military camp and its explosion caused the deaths of his two sisters and a nephew. After two years of hospitalization and several surgeries, his left forearm was amputated.

Biography

M'hamed Issiakhem was born on 17 June 1928 in Taboudoucht (Aït Djennad, Aghribs) in Kabylia. He spent his childhood in Relizane from 1931. In 1943, he picked up a hand grenade that was stolen from a military camp and exploded. Two of his sisters and a nephew died. He was hospitalized for two years and his left arm was amputated. From 1947 to 1951, he studied at the Society of Fine Arts in Algeria, then at the Algerian School of Fine Arts, and took lessons from miniaturist Omar Racim. In 1951 he met Kateb Yacine. From 1953 to 1958 he attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he met Kateb Yacine; The two artists could not be separated from each other. In 1958 Issiakhem left France to stay in the FRG and then reside in East Germany.

In 1962, he worked as a cartoonist in the daily newspaper Alger Républicain. He became one of the founding members of the National Union of Plastic Arts in 1963 and participated in the "Algerian Painters" exhibition organized for the "November 1st Festival" in Algeria, with the foreword written by Jean Sénac, and in the exhibition held in Paris in 1964. Museum of Decorative Arts.

From 1964 to 1966 he headed the painting workshop at the Algerian School of Fine Arts; Among his students was Ksenia Milicevic, director of education at the Oran School of Fine Arts. He later illustrated various works by Kateb Yacine.

From 1965 to 1982 he created models for banknotes and numerous Algerian postage stamps. In 1967, he directed the film "Poussières de Juillet" for television with Kateb Yacine, and in 1968 he directed the sets of Slim Riad's film "La Voie". In 1971 Issiakhem was a professor of graphic art at the Algiers Polytechnic School of Architecture and Urban Planning and created the sets for the film "November". In 1972 he went to Vietnam and in 1973 he received a gold medal for the decoration of the stand of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs at the Algerian International Fair.

From 1973 to 1978 Issiakhem was press cartoonist. In 1977 he directed the creation of a fresco for Algiers Airport. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs published a brochure in Algeria titled "Issiakhem, Lynx-Eye and the Americans, a thirty-five-year painter's hell" with a foreword by Kateb Yacine. In 1978 Issiakhem spent several months in Moscow, and in 1980 he received UNESCO's First Simba d'Or (Golden Lion) award for African art from Rome.

It was the emergence of a new vision, clear and solemn, celebrating the clear expression of volumes and bright, bluish light, thanks to a meticulous plastic structure and a new use of shadows. M'hamed Issiakhem's works reflect the path that Algerian painting followed in the sixties and seventies. The common denominator of his works is the artist's taste in carefully observing light phenomena and his anti-academic interpretation of painting, even though his sources of inspiration are very diverse. M'hamed Issiakhem incorporated a sometimes dreamy, pathetic or rebellious spirit into his paintings that we could not find in any of the Moorish painters of his time.

This situation did not prevent him from being sensitive to the changes in painting, especially in the West, between 1950 and 1980. M'hamed Issiakhem exhibited his works in Paris, Moscow, Leipzig and Rome. He made many trips to Europe, Russia and the United States. His meeting with the great writer and playwright Kateb Yacine revealed to him the secrets of theater decor; Nedjma's enthusiasm increased along with her friendship with her author. The two men become inseparable friends. This was an extremely productive period for the two creators, lasting until 1985, the year of M'hamed Issiakhem's death. Our great artist created dozens of paintings that seduced the public and received praise from art critics.

M'hamed Issiakhem's exhibitions always cause great excitement. However, the great artist always questions the plastic values that bring him success. He is constantly looking for new techniques, new plastic trends.

For M'hamed Issiakhem, the eighties are notable for the great diversity of his research: if he was fascinated above all by abstraction, this means a painting involved in pure invention, recreating the world of shapes according to its own pattern : sif abstraction especially fascinates him, that is to say a painting located in pure invention which recreates the world of forms according to his own desire and his own imagination, he is also interested in cubism and fauvism. During this period he produced large canvases, where the shapes and colors alone allow us to apprehend a reality "other" than that of "objective" forms. His original abstract research follows one another. This period of effervescence undoubtedly conceals a deeper concern, reconciling the anxiety that tormented him, the illness that burned his insides and an uncontrollable need to free himself, to be heavy, to defy death. The exercise in the therapeutic sense of painting must have allowed him to do so.

He died on December 1, 1985 following a long illness.

Tributes

On June 17, 2018, the Google search engine paid tribute to M'hamed Issiakhem and published a doodle on the occasion of his 90th birthday.

The sculptor-painter Bâaziz Hammache who is his friend made a portrait of him in 1985 which is at the Café du Maghreb.

List of works
(not limited)

• Self-portrait, 1949, National Public Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Algiers
• African figures, 1957, Private collection
• Nomads, 1959, Private collection
• Landscape of Kabylie, 1960, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• The martyrs, 1965, Private collection
• Unfinished Berberia, 1968, Private collection
• South, 1968, Private collection
• Little girl, 1969, Private collection
• Black Sun, 1969, Private collection
• Old age, 1970, Private collection
• The widow, 1970, Private collection
• The Bride, 1970, Private collection
• Mayakovsky, 1971, Private collection
• Anguish, 1971-1972, Private collection
• Woman's meditation, 1972, Private collection
• Study on palette, 1972, Private collection
• The surgeon, 1972, Private collection
• Marriage of widowers, 1972, Private collection
• Maternity 1, 1972, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• Beggar, 1972, Private collection
• Gaze of a woman, 1972, Private collection
• Woman with child, between 1972 and 1978, Private collection
• The cripple, 1973, Private collection
• The shadow of a revolution, 1973, Private collection
• Maternity 2, 1974, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• Self-portrait 2, 1976, Private collection
• It's certain, my suffering is useful to others, 1976, Private collection
• Faces, 1976, Private collection
• My tribe Algeria, 1976, Private collection
• The key to happiness, 1976, Private collection
• The casbah, 1976, Private collection
• Women with Berber motifs, 1976, Private collection
• The exodus, 1976/1977, Cirta National Museum
• The story is resumed, let's start again, 1976/1977, Cirta National Museum
• Chaouias, 1978, Private collection
• Past, present, future, 1977, Private collection
• Testament, 1977, Private collection
• She or him, the choice is made, 1977, Private collection
• Leave us like angels, 1978, Private collection
• Cardinal Duval, 1982, Archbishopric of Algiers Collection
• The Blind, 1982, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• Dry tree, 1983, Nasr Eddine Dinet National Museum from Bou Saâda to M'Sila
• Old Kabyle woman, 1983/1984, Private collection
• The Wall, 1984, Private collection
• Old age, 1984, Nasr Eddine Dinet National Museum
• Bitterness, 1985, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• Depression, 1985, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• Oblique, 1985, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• Red, 1985, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• Waiting, 1985, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• She has blue eyes, 1985, National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• The Beggar, Collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers
• Unknown mother, Collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers


https://missiakhem.net/