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Mountassir Chemao el Fihri – Morocco

I am Mountassir Chemao el Fihri. I am artist-painter, and my discipline is painting, sculpture, and photography. I live in Morocco, where I was born.

I am a person very complex, because I have two educations: Moroccan education, Arabic, and French education. Sometimes it is very rich for me, and sometimes I have problem to adapt myself to my original nationality, Moroccan.

I am married, and I have twenty-eight years with a French girl, who I met in France. I have now French nationality and two children...now they are not children; they are married....Yasmina and Nadia, and for each one two surnames.

I wanted to study art, but my father—he’s dead now in 1999—told me, “Mountassir, you must have an insurance for your life, and I hope you take a good direction if you want. Maybe it’s better to study something very serious. I think that art is not serious.”

Maybe somewhere he has a reason, because every artist is not rich at the beginning of his life—maybe after he’s dead. But I have something very interesting. My father is my friend, and I think that he has a very large experience, and I said okay, I do what he wants, And I don’t regret it, because now I am rich rich. And now I have money to continue my first passion, arts-painting.

I am not without arts education, because in French education we learn to draw and to paint very early when we are children, and we have very famous teachers in University, first degree. I learn History of Art, all the materials to practice, and I bought books of art. I meet many artists. I go to their houses, their studios in Paris, in Germany, and with this possibility to participate in Art Camp, I meet a lot of interesting artists.

What can I add?...Yes, I have a License of Law and Doctorate in Economics from a very prestigious university in France—its name, Sorbonne. It benefited me to come back to my country in 1981 and to have a high responsibility in the University of Law of Rabat, a very famous university because they have students from every country and our King Mohammed VI is a student of this university. I have a very good honor, because he is one of my students. I don’t teach him, but I am in places where I see him each day when he comes. He is very simpatic and he is as all other students.

My first serious exhibition was in 1994. I had some exhibitions in banks and hotels before, but my first individual exhibition began in that year. Each year I try to have a personal exhibition and many participations in exhibitions with other artists. It is very interesting. I have a web site and many reviews. I have many reviews on television, and I am very famous in my country.

http://www.mountassir-chemao.com

chemaomoune@yahoo.fr