A Great Figure of The School of Art in Tunis "Hédi Turki"
Tunisia mourns one of its leading figures, Hédi Turki.
With a deep sorrow, we learned the death of the artist "Hédi Turki" aged 97 years, at his residence on Sunday morning in the 31st
of March, 2019 in the city of Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia.
“Conquer matter, form, line. With appetite, vigor, excess.
First the projects, the intentions. Stammers, attempts, hesitations.
Then drafts, dynamic first, vanishing lines and perspectives. Organize chaos, decree the order. Mix the colors, the volumes.
Crush the space, restore it. With a fertile look, free eye, capture the essential, intertwined breaths and sensations.
Mysteries and arabesques of his inspiration.
Exorcise the movement, set the pace.
Weave atmospheres, cross voids. Elegance, radiance, kind of spell. To live in painting, to be inhabited by it.”
This how, Jean-Baptiste Mesona described the course and style
of this Tunisian artist.
Beyond the image and the real, perpetual mobility, to paint is
to extract the vitality of a canvas. To master the abstract,
the informal. To sublimate his desires, his impulses.
To hoard his pleasures, his passions. Luxurious creativity, indomitable.
Audacity and insatiable passion. Turki celebrates the enjoyment
of being in all its vibrations, its gestures.
To possess forever a moment of pleasure, its delights, graces, fervor, enthusiasm and fantasies.
Painting helps to stop the energy to contemplate.
Born in Tunisia in 1922, the artist Hédi Turki was one of
the founders of the "Tunis School" and a symbol of artistic school in Tunisia.
He is a member of the International Association
of Fine Arts of UNESCO.
Known for his spindle and ink drawings, techniques in which
he was one of the masters in Tunisia and which earned us
sly portraits, mixing poetry and emotion, in a kind of
imaged story touching the truth and reality .
In 1986, he received the French Arts and Literatures Medal
and won in 1989 the Tunisian Order of Cultural Merit.
The municipal gallery of the the'Hédi Turki' was inaugurated
in Sidi Bou Said in April 2012.
Article about Hédi Turki entitled “Hédi Turki, parcours abouti
d’un peintre abstrait“ by Jean-Baptiste Mesona, Website.