Saâd Ben Cheffaj was born in 1939 in Tétouan.
A figure of the founding generation of modern Moroccan painting, he studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Seville from 1957 onwards, before attending art history courses at the École du Louvre in Paris. In 1962, he obtained a teaching diploma from the Santa Isabel de Hungría School of Fine Arts in Seville. Upon returning to Morocco in 1965, he taught art history, drawing and painting at the Institut national des Beaux-Arts in Tétouan.
Since his first exhibition in 1956, Saâd Ben Cheffaj has developed a body of work spanning several pictorial languages, from figuration to abstraction. His recent paintings are characterised by dense, earthy materiality, dark tonalities and an expressionist approach to the human figure.
His works have been presented in numerous exhibitions in Morocco and internationally, notably in Spain, France, Peru, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. They are held in several public and private collections, including the Fondation Cartier (France), the Kamel Lazaar Foundation (Switzerland) and the Barjeel Art Foundation (United Arab Emirates).
Saâd Ben Cheffaj lives and works in Tétouan.