Mohammed Khadda (Arabic: محمد الخدة; 14 March 1930 – 4 May 1991) was an Algerian painter, sculptor, and writer.

Khadda has been considered to be among the founders of contemporary Algerian painting and one of the many representatives of the "sign painters.

His father, Bendehiba Khadda, was born in 1912 in the town of Mina and moved to Mostaganem at a very young age.

Khadda’s mother, Nebi El Ghali was born in 1911 in Zemora, Algeria, a city near Tiaret.

[3][7] In 1948, along with his friend Abdallah Benanteur, Mohammed Khadda explored the various art collections presented at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in the capital city Algiers, where he was able to find his first bits of inspiration as a future painter.

[3] During the years of resistance against the French, many artists including Khadda went and fought for the National Liberation Army.

While living in Paris, he was exposed to a diverse set of cultures, communities, traditions, which sharpened his artistic eye.

In 1964, he became member of the Union Nationale des Arts Plastiques (The National Union of Plastic Arts) founded in 1963, under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture and Information, and the Front de Libération Nationale (National Liberation Front).

[10] His art is still celebrated after his death as well, as shown in "Horizons Maghrébins- Le droit à la mémoire"[1], or in "Les Casbahs ne s'assiègent pas"[2].

While working with palettes of earth tones and bright, pure colors, Khadda created tactile compositions that layer Arabic writing and calligraphy over atmospheric abstract canvases.

He dived deeper into his learning of art by studying the artistic archives at the Bibliothèque Nationale Française (BNF).

[11][verification needed][7] His work illustrates these rich influences, which he further explained in his essay Elements pour un Art Nouveau.

[13] Dr. Natasha Marie Llorens, whose doctoral research is focused on Algerian post-colonial cinema, further explains in her review, Whither the sign : Mohammed Khadda in Assia Djebar's La Nouba des Femmes du Mont Chenoua, how Khadda's art is also featured in Algerian films as a means of expressing "a necessary political corrective to social realism in painting, which he felt functioned too easily as ideological propaganda".

During that time, he studied under Pablo Picasso and learned the styles of Cubism which greatly influenced his art.

After returning, he worked to set up an art community in Algeria for young aspiring artists to hone their potential skills.