Kheira Flidjani, born in 1912 in Constantine, Algeria, and died in 1991, is a contemporary Algerian painter.

Kheira Fildjani studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she worked in various artistic professions in the music hall and small roles in the cinema to pay for her lessons.2 She rubbed shoulders with the Parisian artistic community of the time including Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. She first began painting landscapes, still lifes and even practiced clay and sculpture. Free and full of faith in art, she began painting nudes. Kheira Fildjani has a direct approach, often frontal to the model, flat areas of color and sharp strokes of brushes, impromptu allusive detail and the expressive force of the tone locally brought to its maximum intensity.

During the Algerian War of Independence, she was imprisoned by France for her activities in support of the Algerian cause. In 1963, a year after independence, Kheira Flidjani returned to Algeria, in the midst of the African cultural revolution, politically socialist and third worldist, never to leave it again.

On her arrival, she is contacted by Bachir Yellès who tells her about a painters' salon. She offers a work entitled The Odalisque: "I painted it during the Second World War. I had just learned that my father had died. During all these years, I have not been able to get any other news from my family. But currently this painting bears the title of La belle Algéroise. The decor represents an interior from another time. I wanted her to be stretched out sensually." The model's face immediately recalls that of the artist. She laughs and doesn't deny it. " Yes. But it is not an odalisque from the twentieth century but from the time of Princess Aziza. This painting, by changing its title, inspired me to create another work which focuses on the evolution of women.

In 1963, following the collective organizations in Algeria, twelve painters came together at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Algiers and decided to create the National Union of Plastic Arts (UNAP) crystallizing the fine flower of painting Algerian. There was Bachir Yellès (Founding President) Ali Ali-Khodja, Choukri Mesli, Mohamed Temmam, M'hamed Issiakhem, Mohammed Khadda, Mohammed Zmirli, Mohamed Bouzid, Mohamed Ranem, Ahmed Kara-Ahmed, Mohamed Louaïl and Kheira Flidjani.

A few years later, she exhibited. Most of his works are female nudes. In her nudes, Kheira Flidjani is not content to fixate the more or less perfect features of a beautiful particular body, but to confide to everyone, and beyond time, what awakens ardor and passions , love of oneself and of life, a beautiful naked body under the sun. Voices are raised and cause a stir. She will even be shunned by certain artists, but she does not give up. She continues her artistic journey. She exhibited individually in Algiers in 1976, followed by group exhibitions: Algiers 1964, 1965, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1990, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2011, 2013 and Oran 2007.

Sometimes lulled by the sun of her country, sometimes drowned by solitude and the constraints of life, Kheira Flidjani carried within her this love for pictorial art marked by classic painters such as Amedeo Modigliani, Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso... despite protests, Kheira Flidjani existed with her painting, she transformed this art into an instrument of struggle for a reason to live. And then, in the being, the habit of spiritual, intellectual or even physical exercises always ends up modeling a face or a body and imposing on it a structure in a set of signs whose gate and key must be discovered. She has a global vision of the subject, in her artistic conception, she first refuses to isolate the face from the rest of the physical envelope by virtue of her conviction that the whole body contributes to modeling the figure: the nude. How much she suffered. Because she dared to break a taboo. The painting of this painter is therefore not an illusory art... Her works aim to restore the fundamentally individual part of a human being. And it is in this pictorial spirit that Kheira Flidjani expressed herself with passion and audacity, giving her works elements of emotion and life.

Kheira Flidjani died after a long illness in 1991. "Regrets? "I don't care. What's the point of poisoning your existence when you've had a life as beautiful and rich as mine?", she once answered a question.

In 2012, on the occasion of Women's Day, a tribute was paid to Kheira Flidjani, Djamila Bent Mohamed and Aïcha Haddad, pioneers of women painters in Algeria.

https://www.24hdz.dz/kheira-fildjani-artiste-peintre-portrait/