Ahmed Cherkaoui is a crossroads artist. His paintings reconcile tradition and modernity, spirituality and matter. Inspired by Berber motifs, ritual tattoos, Arabic calligraphy and Islamic decorative art, his abstract work is deeply rooted in his Moroccan identity. Gestural painting, which was enjoying a revival in France in the post-war years, found an echo in Cherkaoui's artistic approach. His discovery of the work of Roger Bissière led him to abandon figuration and landscape painting in favor of abstraction. As such, he became associated with the painters of the École de Paris and took part in their 1962 exhibition at the Galerie Charpentier. In 1963, the year our work was produced, he was one of the "Vingt peintres étr...