SOON AT THE SCHIRN: CASABLANCA ART SCHOOL
The Moroccan “New Wave”: The SCHIRN presents the influential art scene around the CASABLANCA ART SCHOOL in a first major exhibition in Germany.
By SCHIRN MAGAZINEJust a few years after Morocco gained independence in 1956, Casablanca became a vibrant center of cultural renewal. The SCHIRN presents the unique and influential work of the Casablanca Art School in a first major, long-overdue exhibition. The main representatives of this innovative school—Farid Belkahia (1934–2014), Mohammed Chabâa (1935–2013), Bert Flint (1931–2022), Toni Maraini (b. 1941), and Mohamed Melehi (1936–2020), together with students, teachers, and associated artists—quickly became the central driving force for the development of postcolonial modern art in the region.
In realizing their aims, they combined an openness to local history with the new social reality. Engaging with the ideas of the Bauhaus movement, they reevaluated the connection between the arts, crafts, design, and architecture in the local context, fusing Western metropolitan arts with elements of the vernacular heritage that had been undermined during the colonial era. The SCHIRN will present some 100 works by 22 artists, including dynamic abstract paintings and urban murals, crafts, graphic design, interior design, and typography. Rarely seen archive material, such as film footage, vintage journals, photographs, and prints, complements these displays, revealing a transnational Moroccan art scene.
The exhibition, divided chronologically and thematically into eight sections, presents the works and central aspects of the Casablanca Art School artists and their associated positions, supplemented by documentary material. In addition, another room brings together books, films, and a chronology. Three films from the video series “School of Walking” (2023) by the artist duo Bik Van der Pol (Liesbeth Bik and Jos Van der Pol) will also be shown in the SCHIRN’s publicly accessible rotunda.
BEGINNINGS
Founded in 1919 during the French protectorate, the École Municipale des Beaux-Arts de Casablanca (later renamed the Casablanca Art School) followed Western pedagogical approaches. The artist Farid Belkahia was appointed the school’s director shortly after Morocco gained its independence, a position he held from 1962 until 1974. During his tenure, Belkahia opened the school’s doors to Moroccan and female students and appointed like-minded teachers who helped him to reimagine Moroccan visual arts and education.
The first room introduces selected works by Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chabâa, and Mohamed Melehi, who formed the school’s core. Influenced by their studies abroad and the interdisciplinary approach of the Bauhaus movement, their new departments merged ideas from art, craft, design, and architecture. Working alongside their students, they began to dismantle the Western styles and methods previously taught at the school, such as easel painting.
MAKING ART PUBLIC
In a defining moment for Moroccan art history, in 1969, the Casablanca Art School teachers organized two open-air exhibitions of paintings and murals titled “Présence Plastique”. By now, three other artists had joined the teaching staff—Mohamed Ataallah, Mustapha Hafid, and Mohamed Hamidi. This section shows works by the six participating artists. The exhibition’s staging was a protest against the state-organized Salon du printemps (Spring Fair). Moroccan artists, more than ten years after independence, still struggled to find spaces or galleries to exhibit their work. In May 1969, “Présence Plastique” opened in two public squares: Jemaa el-Fna, Marrakech, and a few weeks later, Place du 16 Novembre, Casablanca; in 1971, it also traveled to two secondary schools in Casablanca.
CREATING COLLECTIVELY
The annual Casablanca Art School exhibition at La Coupole gallery in the city’s Parc de la Ligue Arabe in 1968 launched Moroccan “new wave” art, characterized by a synthesis of Afro-Amazigh influences and modernist forms of expression and style. The SCHIRN is showing works by some of the school’s most pioneering students—including Malika Agueznay, Abdellah El Hariri, and Houssein Miloudi—that were created and exhibited in collaboration with their teachers.
DESIGN FOR THE EVERYDAY
To inject art into daily life, the artists of the Casablanca Art School, together with architects and a wider network of collaborators, created a vision for public art and the regeneration of neglected public spaces and neighborhoods. One of the most important players was the architectural studio Faraoui & de Mazières. Based in Casablanca and Rabat, they developed a visionary design concept that reached across numerous sites and public infrastructure projects. Between 1967 and 1982, the network designed interiors at Casablanca’s National Tourist Office, the National Bank for Economic Development, factories, hospitals, universities, holiday parks, and new-build hotels. The artists and architects regarded the buildings’ lobbies, walls, ceilings, furniture, and fixtures and fittings as “plastic territories” awaiting creative intervention, integrating art and craft with architecture. The trio—Farid Belkahia, Mohammed Chabâa, and Mohamed Melehi—collaborated on several hotel projects with artists represented in this exhibition: Carla Accardi, Hamid Alaoui, and Mohammed Hamidi.