London

Mehadji, Najia
Born 1950 in Paris, France
Lives and works between Paris, France and Essaouira, Morocco
Since the 80’s, Mehadji’s work achieves a synthesis between a contemporary art that renews painting and some elements of Islamic art such as the dome, the polygon, the floral, the arabesque or the calligraphy, in favour of new concepts and new forms in which the artist invents her own style. She graduated from the University Paris 1 Sorbonne where she defended a dissertation on Paul Cézanne. She also graduated from the School of Fine Arts of Paris. Since 1985, she is dividing her time between her studio her Paris and Essaouira studios. Najia Mehadji’s work has been recently exhibited in a retrospective, La trace et le souffle, Museum of Modern Art, Céret; L’invention du geste, L’Atelier 21, Casablanca, and Al Musiqa, Paris Philharmonic, Paris (2018). Mehadji’s work can be found, among others in the permanent collections of L’Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Le Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; Le Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Museum of Fine Arts, Amman.
Najia Mehadji, Pivoine, 2003, Sanguine on Paper, 57 x 76 cm. Courtesy L'Atelier 21