WPKN's Valerie Richardson interviews artist Fethi Meghelli, an Algerian-American artist whose career spans more than five decades, three continents, and experimentation in a wide variety of media and styles, from printmaking, masks, and found objects to paintings, sculpture, and collage, often combining the urgency of social realism with the expansive imaginativeness of surrealism.

Meghelli earned his BFA from the School of Fine Arts in Algiers, Algeria, where he was mentored by the founders of modern Algerian painting, particularly M'hamed Issiakhem (1928-1985), Choukri Mesli (1931-2017), and Ali Ali-Khodja (1923-2010). He later received his MFA from the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, France, where his main studio professor was renowned Belgian painter Gustave Singier (1909-1984). Meghelli immigrated to the United States in 1974, settling in New Haven, CT, where he has been a practicing artist and art educator for 50 years, having exhibited widely and taught at a range of institutions.