Comptoir des Mines Galerie will present in Marrakech a landmark exhibition dedicated to Abbès Saladi, a major and singular figure in the history of Moroccan art, and a native of the Red City, whose work captured and faithfully conveyed its spiritual essence.

Long kept confidential by the gallery, this exhibition once seemed impossible to realize due to the many discussions undertaken with the various owners of the artist’s works in order to assemble a substantial body of pieces that would make it possible to rediscover Abbès Saladi today. Drawn from the prestigious collections of the late Mustapha Segueni, Pauline De Mazières (founder of Galerie l’Atelier), Emmanuelle and Claude Amzallag, as well as several other private collections, the works featured in the exhibition Abbès Saladi: the mystical odyssey retrace the key stages of the artist’s career.

The exhibition will also present one of Saladi’s earliest known works, created around 1977 and gifted by the artist to Pauline De Mazières, who has generously entrusted it to the exhibition.

Comptoir des Mines Galerie invites audiences to engage in an essential reappraisal of Abbès Saladi’s oeuvre: a visionary body of work that does not merely depict the world but invents its necessity. Born from profound vulnerability and shaped by inner struggle and isolation, his art first emerged as a means of survival before becoming a language in its own right. The visible becomes a passage, and looking becomes an experience.

In a world saturated with manufactured and endlessly recomposed images, Saladi’s work retains a singular power, where fragility becomes language and the image recovers a profound spiritual depth.

The exhibition also pays tribute to the collectors, gallerists, and institutions who, from an early stage, helped preserve and transmit the work of this extraordinary artist.