Timeless art; art which constitutes our heritage. Inside the artist’s atelier there are stacks of canvases, tiny objects, engravings, lithographs, and even a mobile lithography press – Le Petit Jaunais -; objects that tell the story of his life. In Khalid Nazroo’s realm, Aesthetics and Knowledge reign. At the age of five, Khalid Nazroo decides he will be an artist. He studies at the Royal College of Port-Louis and at night, stays up late painting. Under the direction of Philippe de la Hogue Rey and Serge Selvon, he puts on his first exhibition at the Max Boullé Gallery at the age of fifteen. He receives a scholarship to study at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in 1974. In the emblematic city, he spends his Sunday evenings in Beaubourg, in the company of masters, his art predecessors. He rapidly becomes a success. In 1976, he receives an award from the Société Internationale des Beaux-Arts, and in 1978, the Rocheron prize. In 1977 his canvas Le Saut is acquired by the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain in Paris. Since then, Khalid Nazroo’s works of art have been dispersed, from Macedonia to Reunion, from Senegal to the Ivory Coast, from Kuala Lumpur to the United-States, from Switzerland to Japan and in many other locales, forming a rather uncommon diaspora. Khalid Nazroo tells things the way they are, with motifs, which he paints on various mediums in accordance with his identity. His painting is gestural, with saturated colours and simplified, distilled forms. His artworks converse with one another. As an heir of the Cubists and Fauvists, he loves to talk about the Scottish artist Allen Davie, and the Cuban-born Wilfredo Lam, whose philosophies and cultures are familiar to him. Adventurous, he learns about the world by travelling and reading books. He is a seeker, travelling from East to West on scenic routes, across seas, to the most gorgeous cities, always praising the marvels Man has erected. Yet when we contemplate his work, it is a motionless type of travel which transpires. That is, the wealth accumulated from his trips, which he carries within, and not so much the trips themselves. We discern the artist’s tendency to treat his canvas as a plane
surface, devoid of perspective.