M'hamed Issiakhem

M'hamed Issiakhem (in Kabyle: Mḥemmed Isyaxem), born June 17, 1928 in Taboudoucht in Algeria and died December 1, 1985 in Algiers, is an Algerian painter, representative of modern painting in Algeria. He spent his childhood in Relizane, it was there that in 1943, he handled a grenade, picked up in an American military camp, the explosion of which caused the death of two of his sisters and a nephew. After two years of hospitalization and several surgical operations, his left forearm was amputated. At the end of the 1940s, M’hamed Issiakhem enrolled in the Society of Fine Arts of Algiers. Until 1951, the student of the miniaturist Omar Racim followed courses at the School of Fine Arts in Algiers before meeting Kateb Yacine. In Paris, where he met the author of Nedjma, M’hamed Issiakhem exhibited at the André-Maurice gallery and entered the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. A scholarship holder at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid in 1962, he preferred to return to Algeria - indepe...