"Farid Belkahia and the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca 1962-1974"
Exhibition from December 21, 2018 to March 31, 2019
This exhibition aims to highlight a crucial period in the career of Farid Belkahia and his quest for artistic modernity in Morocco. The one where he was the director of the Casablanca School of Fine Arts from 1962 to 1974 and transformed it into an incubator of ideas for the emergence of a modern artistic creation rooted in local culture and emancipated from academic artistic practices. An experiment that he conducted with the support and active involvement of his fellow travelers, namely the two artists Mohamed Melehi and Mohamed Chabaa, the art historian Toni Marini and the anthropologist Bert Flint. Together, they will initiate an innovative pedagogy made up of experimentation, research and publication.
As Toni Marini wrote: “To understand Farid's work, one must remember what this period of artistic ferment and renewal and the lively debates between artists on what could be one art at a time meant for him. national and international, Moroccan and universal.
The tour of this exhibition will show, for the first time, the works of Farid Belkahia made on copper, a material widely used in the traditional arts that he adopted after giving up, in 1962, the practice of easel painting. . The works of his expressionist period will be engraved or executed in bas-relief on copper plates and reveal a gradual transition from a previous artistic practice to this new medium that he has reappropriated and put at the service of a contemporary creation.
The works of his friends and accomplices Mohamed Melehi and Mohamed Chabaa from the 1960s and 1970s will also be presented, as well as those of Mohamed Hamidi, Romain Atala, Mustapha Hafid and André Elbaz. The works of their disciples Malika Agueznay, Abdallah El Hariri, Abdelkrim Ghattas, Abderrahman Rahoule and Houssein Miloudi will complete this journey.
Finally, to evoke the historical context of this experience will be exposed the archive documents, iconography and publications of the time.
A catalog of the exhibition will also be published on this occasion.
The curators of the exhibition:
- Mrs. Rajae Benchemsi
- Mr. Brahim Alaoui
Farid Belkahia Mathaf Museum
From December 21, 2018 to March 31, 2019
The opening of the exhibition will take place on December 21, 2019 at the Farid Belkahia Foundation.
