Omar Mahfoudi was born in 1981 in Tangier, Morocco.
After an initial period focused on portraiture, Omar Mahfoudi developed a pictorial practice centred on landscape, constructing a universe in which realism and fiction intertwine. Based in Paris, he gradually expanded his work towards more open compositions, marked by a veiled quality of light and a particular attention to colour.
His paintings and drawings are characterised by drips and dilution effects that give the scenes a presence that is both diffuse and enigmatic. Isolated figures, bathers, seascapes and twilight landscapes form a recurring visual vocabulary, in which bodies seem absorbed by the spaces surrounding them.
Nourished by a sensitivity to landscape and to certain Far Eastern pictorial traditions, particularly Japanese printmaking, his work is characterised by suspended atmospheres and forms with shifting contours.
His works are held in several public and private collections, including the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Morocco), the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden (Morocco), the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art (Switzerland), the Gervanne & Matthias Leridon collection (France) and the Es Saadi collection (Morocco).
The artist lives and works between Paris and Tangier.