Chaibia Talal was a bold woman with a strong will and character, who developed her art by following her instincts. She was born in 1929 in Morocco, in the town of Chtouka near the port city of El Jadida, despite her childhood being dramatically cut short, she retained indelible memories of this region and its fertile land. She didn’t go to school in early childhood; she lived in the country side and developed highly sensual relationship with nature that nurtured her growing sense of beauty. In her visual universe, she viewed her childhood as a lost paradise, whose memory illuminated her life and provided her with an unlimited source of motifs that she used in her painting. Chaibia was married when she was 13 years old and became a widow at the age of 15, in 1942, just one year after the birth of her son. The death of her husband left her without means so she went to work as a servant during the day to be able to raise her son Hossein, the sole focus of her life. Despite living in near poverty, she kept intact her optimistic and energetic spirits. At night Chaibia found solace in her imagination and dreams, a realm where she could listen to an inner voice spurring her to think about a better world ahead of her. Accordingly, she recounted how her vocation to become a painter was suddenly awakened when she was 25, after she had a dream about it “ I remember seeing the blue sky with swirling veils and unknown people coming up to me with paper and pencils as a gift. The following day, I went straight to buy blue paint, the one that I used for doorframes, and I started making blotches, imprints ”. In 1965, the museum curator Pierre Gaudibert, on a trip to Morocco to discover new artists in the company of his friends the painter Ahmed Cherkaoui and Andre Elbaz, visited the home of Chaibia to take a look at her son Hossein`s artwork. Imagine his surprise when he happened upon the Gouache painting of the young artist mother`s. Chaibia made her first gouache painting using her fingers to apply paint in small pots to pieces of cardboard, following the principals of composition on carpet patterns. Upon seeing them for the first time, Ahmed Cherkaoui marvelled at their similarity to the painting of his favourite artist, Roger Bissiere, stating enthusiastically that “ whereas it took Bissière years of research to achieve his ascetic, Chaibia created it spontaneously ”. Pierre Gaudibert, convinced by Chaibia determination and talent invited her to participate in the 1966 salon of surindependant ( over-independent ) at the museum of modern art of city of Paris. From then on Chaibia took her artistic work very seriously and fully devoted herself to it. In 1972 she joined L òeil de Boeuf gallery and met Pierre Alechinsky and Corneille, she struck a friendship with the latter, a Dutch artist and co-founder of the Cobra group, exhibiting alongside him. She frequented the Paris art scene that gravitated around the gallery, took part on the FIAC as 1981 and was invited to exhibit in Europe, North America and the Arab world.