A contemporary painter born in Rabat in 1951, Mehdi Qotbi moved to France to pursue his art studies, first in Toulouse, then in Paris at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he taught visual arts for thirty years. Since 2011, he has been the president of the National Foundation of Museums of Morocco.
Featured in the permanent collections of museums around the world from New York to Tokyo, his work is a universe in itself, imprinted with poetry, rhythm and pattern through his use of calligraphy to create imaginary ideographic images. At the crossroads between the East, West and Africa, the paintings of Mehdi Qotbi fascinate in their geometric abstraction and their colourful transformation of the written word.
Transposed onto porcelain in the Bernardaud workshops, Nuit des esprits II offers a timeless moment: sharing a cup of tea or coffee in the light of the stars, while the work sheds its reflections on the shimmering surface of each cup.
