Hossein Tallal was born in Casablanca in 1942.
He studied metalwork for six years at a vocational school in Casablanca. In the early 1960s, encouraged by his friend Ahmed Cherkaoui, Tallal exhibited at the Marrakech Winter Salon and won the Grand Prize at this prestigious event, which brought together European painters living in Morocco.
From then on, Hossein Tallal pursued an independent path within the Moroccan art scene, turning away from the dominant trend of his time: abstraction. Tallal was always drawn to circus performers, troubadours and outsiders, as though he sensed a profound affinity between their condition and that of painters. He depicted circus figures and clowns in vivid colours, accentuating the deep sadness of their faces. His practice later evolved towards black-and-white depictions of children with contorted bodies and faces. The lacerated, even tortured appearance of some of his figures recalls the paintings of Francis Bacon, an artist Tallal had never heard of until an art critic pointed out the similarities between their works in the late 1960s.
Tallal drew on real, dreamed and fictional characters, creating a multitude of “imaginary portraits”. Art writer Maurice Arama describes Tallal’s cast of characters in these terms: “The figures, interpreted with humour and irony, are immersed in harmonies of red, pink and mauve, freely agitated by the brush, offering an abundance—gift boxes—of rhythm and colour to the absurd embodiments of our world.”
Hossein Tallal died in Casablanca on 19 February 2022.