Said Ouarzaz

Said Ouarzaz was born in 1965 in the rural area of Essaouira (Morocco), where he lives and works

Said Ouarzaz is a self-taught artist, a farmer by tradition and a bricklayer by trade. He first explored sculpture, and later turned to painting.

Though his works reveal a creative process that bears similarities to other Souiri artists, such as his use of bright colours, repetitions of patterns and rhythms, and overlapping figures, his visual language, nevertheless, remains unique.

His paintings are intense and strange, somewhere between abstract and figurative, taking us to a dreamlike world where animals, plants and diverse characters seem to avoid the viewer’s gaze. His work brims with distorted, entangled figures, hidden under layers of colours and cross-hatching.

His work often assumes a choreographic dimension: like a dancer, the artist enters his canvas to occupy its space, controlling the surface with an irrepressible, vigorous motion. A magnetic performance that perfectly defines this extraordinary artist.