Born in M’saken, Tunisia, Jaber faced hardship early in life, losing both parents and growing up with limited access to formal education. Yet his instinctive creativity led him on a remarkable journey of artistic and personal reinvention.
After moving to France in the late 1950s, he worked as a baker, boxer, performer and street artist in Paris before embracing painting and sculpture. His work is celebrated for its vibrant colours, symbolic figures and raw, expressive power, a visual language that mixes naive imagery with personal mythologies.
Jaber’s art drew the attention of influential figures such as Jean Dubuffet, who regarded him as a key representative of outsider creation. His oeuvre spans gouaches, acrylics, papier-mâché and plaster sculptures, often populated with expressive characters, animals and inscrutable inscriptions that resonate with both humor and depth.
