NAME
Adel Abdessemed
NUIT ESPAGNOLE

“It is a book on creative madness, on the encounter of words and images, and also on friendship.”

Le Figaro

In 2019, Adel Abdessemed and Christophe Ono-dit-Biot were invited to spend the night at the Guernica exhibition at the Picasso Museum, Paris. Somewhat paradoxically, the centrepiece of the show was absent, since it can no longer leave Spanish soil. Armed respectively with chalk and a pen, the artist and the writer set out to find precursors of Guernica in the other paintings exhibited. But the missing work quickly brought Abdessemed back to his own story in Algeria: he spent his childhood with a charcoal pencil in his hand, but was forced to flee for fear of persecution.

The result of this nocturnal encounter was Nuit Espagnole, published with Stock, 2019.

Abdessemed, Adel and Christophe Ono-dit-Biot. Nuit Espagnole. Paris: Stock, 2019.

Photo ©Khanh Renaud for Le Point.