Miloud Labied

Miloud Labied – Untitled, 1977

Born in El Kelaâ des Sraghna in 1939, Miloud Labied was a self-taught artist whose encounter with Jacqueline Brodskis, who was running the painting workshop of the Ministry of Youth and Sports at the time, played a decisive role in establishing his vocation.

He exhibited as early as 1958 at the Oudayas Museum in Rabat. Although he did not study with the artists of the École des beaux-arts in Casablanca, Labied formed close friendships with them, participating in the 1974 Baghdad Biennale and taking part in the 1978 Asilah Cultural Festival alongside Belkahia, Chabâa, Ghattas, and Melehi, among others. In the 1960s and 1970s, his work was the subject of several solo exhibitions in Rabat organized by the galleries L’Atelier, La Découverte, and Bab Rouah.

His body of work is characterized by an expressive style of painting where matter, texture, and gesture take center stage. Inspired by Moroccan landscapes, vernacular architecture, and signs derived from popular cultures, Miloud Labied developed a plastic language blending lyrical abstraction and geometric construction. His compositions play on contrasts of light, heavily worked surfaces, and colorful rhythms, in a quest operating at the intersection of memory, spirituality, and modernity.