Excerpt from art historian Erkki Anttonen’s book Ben Allal Ayad – From Southern Light to Northen Silence”
As a kind of contrast to Ben’s Finnish landscapes of the 2000s, one can consider the series of Moroccan views already from 1997. These works, such as Behind the Mountains, Fishing Village, and Beach House, are vibrantly colorful acrylic paintings that often depict a small village of just a few buildings, with glowing white houses set in the middle of a desolate landscape. Despite their rich colors, the scale and nuances remain controlled and lively. The houses form compact clusters, and the foreground landscape is rhythmically structured by horizontally undulating landforms. At the same time, these forms delineate the color fields of the paintings and their various textural areas. Ben also explains that in these works he sought, following the teachings of Paul Cézanne, to explore the weight and interplay of different colors and tonal variations. The moods of the works range from the glare of the midday sun to nocturnal, nocturne-like tones.
This book is available at Kankari Art Villa and through the online store of Akateeminen bookstore.
