Like many Moroccans of her time, Mehdi Qotbi grew up in an extremely modest environment. He therefore realized very early that in order to "get out of it," he had to rely only on himself; and this is how this openness to others came to him. What at first was a necessity, will eventually become a means, and even a means of pictorial expression.
He attended primary school at Lalla Aïcha school in the popular district of Rabat. At 12, he attends a military parade. Fascinated by the uniform, he goes boldly and determinedly to Mahjoubi Aherdan, Minister of National Defense, but also a painter and poet, and asks him to bring him to Kenitra Military High School.
Mehdi Qotbi will only make a short passage, but this is where his destiny rocked: he discovered a passionate interest and a certain vocation for drawing.
Then it is the School of Fine Arts in Rabat for 2 years, from 1967 to 1968 when a new passion, painting. He is only 17 years old and feels that his salvation will come to him by Art.
His meeting in 1969 with the painter Jillali Gharbaoui will reinforce this conviction, especially since this painter, then at the peak of his glory, is involved in the paintings of Mehdi Qotbi, sells two of them, and encourages him to continue his career. pictorial quest.
But Mehdi Qotbi, convinced that he must erase the cracks of his childhood and out of his poverty, has only a compelling and obsessive desire: to escape from his country at any cost.
Thanks to the support of the Secretary of State he had known among the Aherdan, he obtained a passport and managed to leave his country to France. It was thus in 1969 that he enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Toulouse where he stayed until 1972 and graduated, becoming the youngest graduate in France.
He left Toulouse for Paris and followed, for 2 years, the courses of the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts. He then went to high school college Saint-Joseph in Auxerre, from 1973 to 1978, and became a professor of visual arts. Subject that he teaches from 1978 until 2006, at La Rochefoucauld high school in Paris. From then on, he continues to lead his teaching profession and his painting.
But it is from 1968 that opportunities are offered to expose his pictorial work, mainly in France but also around the world where his work begins to be noticed and internationally recognized. He exhibits on all continents, Europe, North America, South America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, India.
DECORATIONS:
Commander of the Order of the Republic of Hungary
Commander of the Légion d'Honneur (France)
Commander of Arts & Letters (France)
Officer of the National Order of Merit (France)
Officer of the Order of the Throne (Morocco)
Knight of Academic Palms (France)