Born in 1945 in Azemmour, where he currently resides and works, Bouchaïb Habbouli is a self-taught painter. His penchant for drawing and color led him, in the wake of independence, to undergo training as a plastic animator provided by le Ministère de la Jeunesse et des Sports (the Ministry of Youth and Sports).
From 1957 to 1963, he attended workshops at La Mamora (in Rabat) while simultaneously mentoring children who regularly attended the youth center in his hometown. The painter received basic training in plastic arts and dedicated himself to teaching without halting his profound artistic exploration, bridging Western modernism and Moroccan culture.
Using a single and often dark hue, employing walnut ink extensively, Bouchaïb Habbouli extracts a multitude of chromatic nuances that enrich his doubled forms, scattered across the canvas or spread out to create more or less distinct gradations. This technique unveils an anthology of faces with diverse volumes: elongated, flattened, barely suggested, and elaborated with vigorous strokes.
The approach, quintessentially, is mythical. This artistic asceticism allows the painter to prioritize form and its variations, reworking them to extract the maximum range of possible interpretations. His blocks of color and emotionally charged gradients serve as an invitation to contemplation and reflection