Sadok Gmach (1940–2024) often recalled that he had been a student of Yahia Turki (1903–1969) at the École Normale Supérieure. After attending open courses at the School of Fine Arts in Tunis for six months, he began exhibiting at the Salon Tunisien as early as 1956, while simultaneously pursuing a career as a teacher of Arabic. His meeting with Néjib Belkhodja (1933–2007) in the early 1960s proved decisive: “We began discussing and exchanging ideas. We felt that painting had stagnated and that artists were no longer renewing themselves.”
Sharing Belkhodja’s studio at 24 bis rue du Caire, Gmach met Fabio Roccheggiani (1925–1967), Carlo Caracci (1935–2015), Lotfi Larnaout (1944–2023), and Jean-Claude Heinen (1945–2017). It was around the figure of Belkhodja that the Groupe des Six emerged. Their aim was to break away from the so-called folkloric painting associated with the “School of Tunis.” In March 1964, they organized an exhibition at the Municipal Gallery of Tunis.
The group soon attracted the attention of Ricardo Averini, art critic and director of the Italian Cultural Institute, who became one of their most important supporters. In October 1964, Averini organized an exhibition of small-format works by American and European artists at the Maison de la Culture, in collaboration with the National Cultural Committee. Many of the works had previously been shown at the Palermo Biennale. A Tunisian section featuring artists from the Groupe des Six was also included. Averini justified this choice by emphasizing the modernity of their work: “In my opinion, this group is the most representative of young Tunisian painting. In particular, Belkhodja and Sadok Gmach, whose figurative painting has avoided the folklore of ‘tourist postcards.’”
Through Averini’s support, the collective benefited from a series of exhibitions held in the conference hall of the Italian Cultural Institute at 99 Avenue de Paris, which was transformed into an exhibition space for the occasion. It was there that Sadok Gmach held his first solo exhibition in December 1964. Averini praised his figurative compositions, populated by hieratic figures—resembling mannequins devoid of facial features—standing alone within vast landscapes. The broad treatment of space, combined with a marked stylization, creates a sense of stillness and estrangement, evoking the harshness of the human condition: The Peddler, The Worker, The Man with the Pickaxe, and The Hammel.[4] In their metaphysical atmosphere, Gmach’s paintings occasionally recall the work of Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978).
His participation in the Paris Biennale in 1967 appears to have had a decisive impact on his pictorial research. At his third solo exhibition, held at Juliette Nahum’s Salon des Arts in February 1968, he introduced a new spatial approach. Alongside earlier works, new compositions revealed fragmented spaces structured by window bars, as well as increasingly geometricized costumes worn by his figures. Mondher Ben Milad described these developments as the coexistence of “two twin systems: that of the vast space and that of the decomposed space.”[5] The influence of Belkhodja’s geometric medinas—whose architectural vocabulary could hardly have left Gmach indifferent—was also apparent.
A year later, the artist stayed at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Continuing his exploration, he moved toward a form of geometric abstraction characterized by vivid colors and compositions structured by vertical, horizontal, and oblique lines. The outcome of his Paris residency (1969–1970) was a series of approximately twenty abstract canvases in which traces of reality persist only through evocations of the moon, the sun, or landscape motifs. Yet the elongated, highly stylized human silhouette remains omnipresent, lending these compositions a visual dynamic reminiscent of the kinetic and optical art then in vogue.
During the same period, Gmach exhibited alongside Abdelmajid El Bekri (b. 1942) and M’hamed M’timet (1938–2011) at Galerie Yahia in February 1969. Nicknamed the “Three Musketeers” or the “Three Horsemen” by critic Taoufik Boughedir, they formed the nucleus of Groupe 70. The collective later expanded to include two sculptors, Abderrazak Fehri (1941–2024) and Hachemi Marzouk (b. 1940), a painter, Ameur Makni (b. 1937), and an engraver, Khalifa Cheltout (b. 1939).[6] Each year, the artists organized a traveling annual exhibition under the auspices of the National Cultural Committee, chaired by Lamine Chabbi, whose unwavering support proved essential. In the 1980s, the collective was renamed Groupe 80.
Gmach’s travels eventually brought him to West Berlin, where he lived between 1970 and 1971. There, he continued his artistic experimentation, this time embracing the language of Pop Art. Employing strident colors inspired by comic strips, he frequently addressed politically engaged themes—such as the struggle against racism, decolonization, and the Palestinian cause—while also drawing on elements of popular culture. This period resulted in around twenty works, including Silence, Rolling!, A Desire to Engrave, The Cigar Is Still Lit, and The Olympic Games in Munich. The series was presented upon his return to Tunisia at the Municipal Art Gallery at the end of 1971.
Several of these works were also shown at the Damascus Festival in October 1972, particularly those celebrating resistance and figures associated with Palestinian activism, such as Leila Khaled in In Jaffa I Had a House, as well as the American communist activist Angela Davis in Crucifixion in Black.
Between 1964 and 1972, Sadok Gmach relentlessly pursued his artistic path. Through travels across Europe and the Middle East, his involvement in the Groupe des Six, and his role in founding Groupe 70, his work reflects both the political climate of the time and his ongoing formal and aesthetic investigations.
Alia Nakhli
Art Historian
Professor, ESSTED – University of Manouba