Nour-Eddine Jarram

Nour–Eddine Jarram (1956) got known in the 90’s through his paintings in which he mixed elements from the paintings of Dutch old masters with motives from islamic culture. He replaced the heads of the physicians from Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson with tulips, for example. After this he developed his own landscapes in which human figures are hidden. They look like images from a dream or hallucination, in the fold of a mountain a face lights up, a hill forms the shoulder of a man. During the process of drawing one shape evokes another, naturally integrating the emerging figures into the landscape that is presented in the image. Due to the warm earth colours, deep blues and elegant, sometimes calligraphic lines, the pastel drawings have an unmistakably non-Western character.

Jarram, educated in Casablanca and subsequently in Enschede, The Netherlands units in his work abstract forms with more narrative and figurative elements that are combined and integrated in the image. Over the past year, he has taken 17th-century Dutch landscapes as a point of departure for his pastel drawings. In much the same way as the 17th-century painters, he adapts the landscapes to his own needs. Here and there a little man, composed of calligraphic characters, wanders through the landscape; a reference to Jarram’s own situation as a Moroccan artist surrounded by Dutch culture. Sometimes the little man is carrying a flag that does not feature a radical Islamic slogan but the words I Love Art instead.
www.noureddinejarram.nl