Jellal Ben Abdallah Biography
Jellal Ben Abdallah was a Tunisian artist and illustrator.
Born in 1921 in Tunis, Jellal Ben Abdallah enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts de Tunis, but remained there for only three weeks. Her first drawings appeared in the first Tunisian feminist periodical “Leïla” in the 1930s. After winning first prize in painting and obtaining a scholarship, he moved to Paris for three months in 1949. In Paris, he joined the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in the Montparnasse neighborhood and also traveled to Venice, Florence and Rome. However, Ben Abdallah is considered more as a self-taught artist and gained experiences from his encounters with professional European or Tunisian painters.
He gradually inserted himself into Tunisian artistic circles and was one of the founding members of the École de Tunis under the supervision of Pierre Boucherle in 1949. For some time, Jellal Ben Abdallah was passionate about the Italian Renaissance and the primitives, but the inspiration The artist's initial inspiration was Tunisian popular culture. He liked to illustrate moments of daily life, particularly with female figures, through very poetic scenes in a miniaturist style. At the same time, he was commissioned to execute frescoes or decorations for many institutions and premises in France and Tunisia. After a retrospective exhibition in 2009, in 2010 her long career was celebrated with a solo exhibition of thirty paintings at the Atrium Gallery in Carthage entitled 'Femmes, je vous aime!'.
Jellal Ben Abdallah passed away in 2017 in Sidi Bou Saïd.
