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Revision as of 18:46, 12 April 2006 by BKLisenbee (talk | contribs) (corrected typo and added street address)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Ahmed Yacoubi was born in Fez, Morocco in 1928 (the exact date of his birth is unknown). The expatriate writer and composer Paul Bowles met the young Ahmed ben Driss el-Yacoubi in the autumn of 1947 in Fez, and they became inseparable friends. In the early 1950s Paul Bowles encouraged Yacoubi to paint in his abstract surrealist style. They began to travel throughout Morocco and later made voyages to England, Spain, Italy, Turkey, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Japan. In 1952 Paul Bowles travelled with Yacoubi to his island, Taprobane, located off the southern coast of Ceylon.
Bowles arranged for his first exhibition at the Gallimard Agency bookshop on the Boulevard Pasteur in Tangier. His art was highly acclaimed and 28 works were sold. Further exhibitions were held at the Galerie Clan in Madrid and the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York. The painter Francis Bacon arranged for an exhibition of Yacoubi's art in 1957 at the Hanover Gallery in London, England. Other exhibitions were held during the 1960s and 1970s in Tangier and Casablanca, Morocco.
Paul Bowles translated Ahmed Yacoubi's stories from Moroccan Arabic into English: "The Man and The Woman" (1956), "The Man Who Dreamed of Fish Eating Fish" (1956) and "The Game" (1961), and a play "The Night Before Thinking" which was published in the Evergreen Review in 1961.
In 1953 Yacoubi and Bowles made a voyage to the United States and they stayed at the Connecticut estate of singer Libby Holman, who seduced the young man into a passionate affair, lavishing him with gifts. This affair was short-lived and Holman soon paid his passage back to Morocco.
Ahmed Yacoubi's close friendship diminished over several years and by 1958 he had found a girl friend in Tangier and married her, but after several years the marriage ended. They had one daughter named Karima.
In 1966 Yacoubi moved to the United States and lived and worked in New York City, where he lived for seven years with the artist Carol Cannon in a loft on Great Jones Street. Yacoubi died from cancer in New York on December 25 1985, at the age of 57.
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