Outsider Artist Jaber

Jaber (French, b. 1938)

Jaber was born in 1938 in M’saken, Tunisia. Orphaned at the age of three, he was raised by his big sister. He went to school until the age of eight, then became a baker’s apprentice. As a teenager he used to draw with charcoal on the walls of the bakery and recalls the images of birds, flowers and fish that he used to make with bread dough.

He worked in Sousse, Tunisia at first, and in 1956 moved to Saint-Laurent-du-Var and later Cagnes-sur-Mer (Riviera), France. In 1958 he moved to Paris and became a boxer. He then became a street actor and singer, earning the nickname “monarch of beaubourg."

After his first exhibition in the gardens of the Place des Vosges, in Paris, he went to New Jersey and married an American girl he had met in Paris. The marriage ended in divorce after two years, but while he was in the U.S. he won his first art award at the Plainfield Annual Festival of Art for a work called “the happy idiot." From 1976 to 1979 he traveled to several other countries including Canada, Morocco, and Egypt.

Jaber creates images of extraordinary life-force. His vigorous drawings and vivid colors make them easily recognizable. For twenty years he has been painting and exhibiting his works all over the world, including Spain, Canada, Tunisia, Switzerland, the United states and France. All his exhibitions are produced through the initiative of friends and dealers - Jaber shows no concern when it comes to selling his work.

Judy A Saslow Gallery