Hassan El Glaoui was a Moroccan figurative painter best known for his depictions of fantasia horsemen.
El Glaoui was born in Marrakesh, Morocco, on December 29, 1924, to the last Pasha of Marrakesh, Thami El Glaoui. The artist credited British Prime Minister Winston Churchill with convincing his powerful father to let him pursue painting as a career, particularly after a 1943 meeting when the Pasha sought and received Churchill's opinion of his son's paintings. The son was the scion to a 300-year-old dynasty over the Berbers, but went into exile following his father's death, with which his family's wealth was confiscated and Hassan El Glaoui himself jailed. He moved to a suburb of Paris upon his release, where he lived with his French wife in a small two-room apartment. Beginning in the early 1950s, El Glaoui trained in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean Souverbie (fr) and Émilie Charmy. He returned to Morocco after 15 years, in 1965. His first show was held under a tent in Morocco.
His paintings follow the Moroccan figurative tradition, and his main subjects are military horses and their riders. He rose to prominence in the 1980s with his modernist figurative paintings of fantasia horsemen and landscapes. The artist was later exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, among other places, and his work auctioned by Sotheby's. He held solo shows in Paris (1950), New York (1952, 1967), London (1960), Brussels (1969), and Casablanca, and his works are collected in the Royal Palace Collection in Fez, Morocco, and the Parliament Collection in Rabat. In exile in New York, he stood out in his djellaba and retained his polite demeanor.
El Glaoui's works were appreciated by Moroccan Kings Hassan II and Mohamed VI. A painting by El Glaoui sold for €42,000 through Christie's auction house in 2007. In early 2012, El Glaoui's work was exhibited alongside Churchill's Moroccan paintings of Marrakech, as proposed by El Glaoui's daughter and curated by Daniel Robbins at the London Leighton House Museum. The 2014 Marrakesh Biennale also showed the pairing. His children are also in the fine arts industry. Touria El Glaoui started the contemporary African art fair 1:54, and Ghizlan El Glaoui paints in a mosaic style.
El Glaoui died on June 21, 2018 in Rabat, aged 93.

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