Chaibia Talal

Chaïbia Talal (Arabic: الشعيبية طلال‎) (1929 – April 2, 2004) was a Moroccan painter.


Chaïbia was born in Choutka, a small village near El Jadida, Morocco in 1929. At the age of 13, she was sent to Casablanca by her parents to marry a 70 year old man. By the age of 14, she had given birth to a son, and by the age of 15 she had become a widow. When her husband died, she worked as a maid to earn money to support herself and her son. Talal was devoted to provide her son with an education, and focused on providing him with academic literacy. Talal herself would remain illiterate her entire life. Then one day she said she had a dream in which strangers would give her painting supplies. This inspired her to teach herself to paint and become a painter.


Talal's son ended up becoming a respected artist in his own right, and in 1965 brought home some friends, including the director of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, Pierre Gaudibert. By 1966, Talal's works were exhibited in Casablanca at the Goeth-institut and at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.


Talal was self-taught, and known for breaking traditional boundaries. Her work is categorized as a part of "outsider art". This style illustrates unconventional ideas by members of non-traditional art movements. She was influenced by works of artists from the CoBrA painting movement. Her work is also considered by some people, such as journalist Ahmed El Fassi, to be an example of naïve art.


There was a 2015 Moroccan biographical movie created about Chaïbia Talal, called Chaïbia, directed by Youssef Britel, written by David Villemin and Youssef Britel, and starring Saadia Azgoun as Chaïbia Talal.


Talal remains to be the only Moroccan painter to be listed on the stock market, as she had enthusiasts willing to invest over $100,000 for her work.


In 2004, Talal died of a heart attack in Casablanca at the age of 75.

This is a part of the Wikipedia article used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). The full text of the article is here →