: Morocco
Born : 1920 in Ait Bougmez
Said Ait Youssef is a painter born in 1920 in the Ait Bougmez valley, in the High Atlas, and died in 1986 in Agadir.
He is an artist with an atypical background. A shepherd at a young age and then a soldier who participated in the Indochina War on behalf of the French army, he returned to his native country in 1951. Shortly after, he began painting as an autodidact.
The artist has a keen sense of color and pays particular attention to the beauty of nature in his native valley. His paintings are a reproduction of his childhood memories, landscapes and popular scenes.
Saïd Ait Youssef is part of the collection of the Musée d’Art Brut, Fondation Jean Dubuffet in Paris and the Musée des Beaux Arts in Laval.
His first personal exhibition took place in Marrakech in 1959.