CASABLANCA ART SCHOOL. A POST­COLO­NIAL AVANT-GARDE 1962–1987

Just a few years after Morocco gained inde­pen­dence in 1956, a vibrant center of cultural renewal devel­oped in Casablanca. The main repre­sen­ta­tives of this inno­v­a­tive school—Farid Belkahia (1934–2014), Mohammed Chabâa (1935–2013), Bert Flint (1931–2022), Toni Maraini (1941) and Mohamed Melehi (1936–2020), together with students, teachers, and asso­ci­ated artists—soon became a central driver of the devel­op­ment of a post­colo­nial modern art in the region. Their aims combined an open­ness toward local history with the new social reality. They included a reassess­ment of the rela­tion­ship between art, hand­i­crafts, design, and archi­tec­ture within the local context in dialogue with the ideas of the Bauhaus mani­festo. This was achieved by combining artistic influ­ences from Western metrop­o­lises with elements of the vernac­ular legacy which had been under­mined during the colo­nial era. The Schirn will be presenting some 100 works, including large-format, colorful, abstract (mural) paint­ings, graphic exper­i­ments, and everyday objects, as well as compre­hen­sive docu­men­tary mate­rial, revealing a specif­i­cally Moroccan art scene with transna­tional aspi­ra­tions.