Algerian painter From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Azouaou Mammeri (1890 or 1892—1954), also known as Si Azouaou Mammeri, was an Algerian painter born in 1890[1] or 1892[2] in the village of Taourirt-Mimoun which was part of Aït Yenni. He died on September 17, 1954, in Aït Yenni.
A photograph of Mammeri in 1924
Mammeri was born to the Aït Yenni tribe, the son of Saïd ben Mohammed.[2] His family was that of hereditary Caïds, and the region in which he was born near the Kabylia Mountains was considered favorable for the colonial administration's goals of educating the indigenous in French language and culture.[3] From 1906 to 1909, he attended l'École Normale d'Alger in Bouzareah, a training college for schoolteachers.[3] He also visited various cities of France accompanied by student teachers.
Mammeri was appointed to a teaching position in October 1909 in Toudja, which is near Béjaïa. He met Édouard Herzig, who helped advise him when Mammeri started as a painter. In 1913, Mammeri was appointed to Gouraya, which is between Cherchell and Ténès, and met Léon Carré, who shared his knowledge of painting with him over a period of eight months.[3]
Mammeri's Koranic school drawing, 1918
In 1916, he went to Fez, Morocco, where his cousin, Mohammad Mammeri, was a tutor to the future Mohammed V of Morocco.[3] Mammeri found success in Fez and Rabat as a teacher. Starting in 1917, he contributed to articles in the French government's magazine France-Maroc[3] such as one discussing life in a bilingual primary school in Morocco.[4] His article in the December 1918 issue of France-Maroc contained among other things, one of his important early works, Koranic School.[5] The drawing is similar to his oil painting titled Interior of a Koranic School which is at the Cleveland Museum of Art.[3][6] The Koranic School painting, along with a few others, were featured in an exhibition in Paris in 1921.[3] In Mammeri's first exhibition in Paris, which was in 1917, he exhibited two landscape paintings of Fez, and in 1921, Léonce Bénédite acquired those for the Musée du Luxembourg.[3]
In 1921, Mammeri started exhibiting his art in Algiers.
One of Mammeri's woodcuts that was exhibited by the Brooklyn Museum in 1923
With Mammeri's return to Algeria, he became a caïd in 1922, acting as an administrator in the area where he grew up. This was during a period where French interest in his art was high,[3] also attested to by three of Mammeri's woodprints being part of a print exhibition that happened at the Brooklyn Museum in 1923.[7] The woodcuts were said to be from the Society for the Diffusion of French Knowledge in America by a New York Times article, which reflects how critics of the time perceived Mammeri as an "Occidental artist".[8] Mammeri listened to the various problems of locals, who were also excited by Mammeri's art.[3]
In 1927, Mammeri returned to Morocco where he was an art teacher in Fez. In 1928, he became a regional inspector of indigenous arts in Rabat and in 1929, he was appointed as inspector of Moroccan arts in Marrakech, a position he held until 1948 when he retired. After his retirement, Mammeri founded a museum for indigenous arts in Dar Si Said, a school, and orchestras of Andalusian and Berber music with a weekly radio program on Radio Rabat.
Mammeri is considered by some[who?] to be the most Moroccan of the Algerian artists, and to be the most Algerian of the Moroccan artists. Mammeri is also considered the first and oldest authentic Algerian painter. Mammeri was posthumously awarded le Grand Prix artistique de l'Algérie 1955. Mammeri was included in Jean Sénac's 1963 exhibition of Algerian painters.[9]
Members of Mammeri's extended family include anthropologist Mouloud Mammeri (1917–1989). Mammeri's grandson Azwaw Mammeri (1954–2021), who signed his name as "Azwaw", was also a painter.[10]
Collective exhibitions:
1917: Paris
1921: Paris, Pavillon de Marsan
1921: Algiers, Salon des Orientalistes Algériens
1927: Algiers, Salon d'Hiver
1930: Algiers
1931: Paris, and in the following years Casablanca, Cairo, London, Oran, Rabat
1934: Naples, Seconda mostra internazionale d'arte coloniale,
1935: Marrakech, 1er Salon de la France d'Outre-Mer
Benjamin, Roger (2002). "Colonial Tutelage to Nationalist Affirmation: Mammeri and Racim, Painters of the Maghreb". Orientalism's Interlocutors. Duke University Press: 43–78. doi:10.1515/9780822383857-005. ISBN9780822383857.
Text from Le sicile de XXe dans l’art algérien, texts by Ramon Tio Bellido, Malika Dorbani Bouabdellah, Dalila Mahammad Orfali and Fatma Zohra Zamoum, Château Borély, Marseille / Orangerie du Sénat, Paris, April-August 2003, Paris, Aica press, 2003, pp. 153-155
Texts from Le sicile de XXe dans l’art algérien, texts by Ramon Tio Bellido, Malika Dorbani Bouabdellah, Dalila Mahammad Orfali and Fatma Zohra Zamoum, Château Borély, Marseille / Orangerie du Sénat, Paris, April-August 2003, Paris, Aica press, 2003, pp. 155-156
J. Gasser, L'école nord-africaine dans l'art français contemporain, Paris, Les œuvres représentatives, 1931.
P. Angéli, Les maîtres de la peinture Algérienne, other editions and 1956.
Azouaou Mammeri, Comment je suis venu à la peinture, Rabat, Conférence Rotary-Club Maroc, 1950.
Louis-Eugène Angeli, in Algéria, n°42, May-June 1955, pp. 40-44.
Musées d'Algérie, II, L'art populaire et contemporain, Algiers, Ministry of Information and culture, 1973 (reproduction of Femme dans le patio, p. 69).
L'Algérie, Éditions Enal, Algiers 1988.
Dalila Mahhamed-Orfali, Chefs-d'œuvre du Musée national des beaux-arts d'Alger, Algiers, 1999 (reproduction: Village Kabyle n° 73.
Marion Vidal-Bué, Alger et ses peintres (1830-1960), Paris, Paris-Méditerranée, 2000.
Élisabeth Cazenave, Les artistes de l'Algérie. Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, 1830-1962, Bernard Giovanangeli editor, Association Abd-el-Tif, 2001.
50e anniversaire de la mort de Mammeri Azouaou, le maître de la peinture moderne dans L'Expression, 5 october 2004.
Véronique Llorens, La peinture algérienne, thesis dissertation, Paris.
Marion Vidal-Bué, L'Algérie des peintres, 1830-1960, Paris, Éditions Paris Méditerranée / Algiers, Edif 2000, 2002 (reproduction: La vallée de l'Arbâa, Oued Djemâa 1952, p. 83), ISBN2-84272-143-8
Le Sicile de XXe dans l’art algérien, (text by Ramon Tio Bellido, Malika Dorbani Bouabdellah, Dalila Mahammad Orfali and Fatma Zohra Zamoum), Château Borély, Marseille / Orangerie du Sénat, Paris, April-August 2003 ISBN2950676812.
Pierre Sanchez and Stephane Richemond, La Société des peintres orientalistes français, 1889-1942, et Histoire de la Société des peintres orientalistes français, Éditions l'Échelle de Jacob, Dijon, 2008 ISBN978-291322473-5.
François Pouillon (ed.), Dictionnaire des peintres orientalistes de langue française, Karthala, 2008 (note by Michèle Sellès) ISBN978-2-84586-802-1BnF41383309f.
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