"A country without artists is a dead country... I hope we are alive..." It is in this film by Fawzi Sahraoui produced by the RTA in 1985 and filmed a few months before the painter M'hamed Issiakhem 'turns off this sentence is spoken. A very interesting docu-fiction in which Issiakhem delivers himself with finesse, passion and generosity.
Title: M'hamed Issiakhem (محمد اسياخم) Type: Docu-Fiction Director: Fawzi Sahraoui Country: Algeria 🇩🇿 Duration: 43 mins - Color First broadcast: 01/12/1985 Production: Algerian Television Broadcasting
M'hamed Issiakhem was born on June 17, 1928 in Taboudoucht, Tizi-Ouzou (Aït Djennad, Aghribs) in Kabylia. From 1931, he spent his childhood in Relizane. In 1943, he handled a grenade, stolen from an American military camp, which exploded. Two of his sisters and a nephew died. Hospitalized for two years, his left arm was amputated. From 1947 to 1951, he was a student of the Society of Fine Arts in Algiers, then of the School of Fine Arts of Algiers and followed the courses of the miniaturist Omar Racim and those of Jean-Eugène Bersier1. In 1951, he met Kateb Yacine. From 1953 to 1958, he attended the Paris School of Fine Arts where he met Kateb Yacine - the two artists remained inseparable. In 1958, Issiakhem left France to stay in the FRG and then reside in the GDR.
In 1962, after independence, he was a cartoonist for the daily Alger republican. In 1963, he was a founding member of the National Union of Plastic Arts and participated in the exhibition of "Algerian Painters" organized in Algiers for the "November 1st Festival"2 and prefaced by Jean Sénac then in 1964 in that which is presented in Paris at the Museum of Decorative Arts. From 1964 to 1966, he was head of the painting workshop at the Algiers School of Fine Arts; among his students, he counts Ksenia Milicevic. Then, he was educational director of the Oran School of Fine Arts. He then illustrated several works by Kateb Yacine.
From 1965 to 1982, he created models for banknotes and numerous Algerian postage stamps. In 1967, he directed with Kateb Yacine a film for television, Poussières de Juillet, in 1968 the sets for the film La Voie, by Slim Riad. In 1971, Issiakhem was a professor of graphic art at the Polytechnic School of Architecture and Urban Planning in Algiers and created the sets for the film Novembre.
He traveled to Vietnam in 1972 and received a gold medal in 1973 at the Algiers International Fair for decorating the stand of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. From 1973 to 1978, Issiakhem was a press cartoonist. In 1977, he directed the creation of a fresco for Algiers Airport. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs publishes in Algiers a booklet for which Kateb Yacine writes the preface under the title Issiakhem, Lynx-Eye and the Americans, thirty-five years of a painter's hell.
In 1978, Issiakhem spent a few months in Moscow and in 1980 received the First Simba d'Or (Golden Lion) from Rome, a UNESCO distinction for African art.
He died on December 1, 1985. His name was given to the first large private gallery in Algiers, which subsequently became the ISMA gallery then the Asma gallery.
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