The IMA-Tourcoing exhibition presents a retrospective devoted to the work of Étienne Dinet, a painter with an extraordinary destiny! This exhibition will seek to solve a double mystery:

• How did the work of a French colonial painter become one of Algeria’s visual identities after independence?
  "Why is Étienne Dinet one of the only Orientalist painters who escapes the reproach of exoticism and the trial done to the colonial gaze?" His painting is out of step with the orientalist painters who only attached themselves to the most gleaming aspects of a fake «Orient» that he denounces. Dinet is above all a realistic painter. The unity of his approach passes by his painting but also by his illustrations of works that will be presented in the exhibition. Étienne Dinet converted to Islam in 1913 under the name of Nasreddine and this personal turn completes from a spiritual and moral point of view his aesthetic choices. Étienne Dinet publicly protested against dramatically unfair social realities. He said he was “forced to live in the midst of this filthy colonial rot.” He played an important civic role with the French authorities during the Great War by hammering the elementary gratitude due to the indigenous Muslim soldiers. Étienne Dinet ended up occupying a prominent place in Algerian culture. The national historiography dissociates it from colonialism, going so far as to make it a figure of nascent nationalism, which it was not. This exhibition – the first dedicated to the artist since 1930 – brings together some 100 works. It aims to show the different aspects of Dinet, as well as his humanist personality, a great painter who is also a link and a bridge to reconcile memories.

  Curatorship: Mario Choueiry, art historian, chargé de mission at the Institut du monde arabe, Paris > With the exceptional support of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris > Media partners: France 3 Hauts-de-France, Pastel FM