A major exhibition on artists from the famous art school of Casablanca, opened this Saturday at the English museum Tate St Ives, to last until January 2024.
Tate St Ives will thus be the first museum in the UK to explore the intense period of artistic renaissance that followed Moroccan independence, forged by the experimental teaching methods of the Casablanca Art School in the 1960s and 1970s.
Led by Farid Belkahia alongside Mohammed Chabâa, Mohamed Melehi and others, this pioneering school paved the way for a new generation of socially engaged modern artists who formed an influential avant-garde network.
Works by 22 artists will be brought together to demonstrate the wide variety of Morocco’s ‘new wave’, from vibrant abstract paintings and urban murals to applied arts, typography, graphic design and interior design, Tate says, noting that the exhibition will also include a selection of rarely seen print archives, period newspapers, documentary photographs and film.
This exhibition is a collaboration between the Tate St Ives and the Sharjah Art Foundation, where it will open in February 2024. It is also part of a key moment in international research on the Casablanca Art School, which includes a collaborative project initiated in 2020 between KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Sharjah Art Foundation, in partnership with Goethe-Institut Morocco, ThinkArt and Zamân Books & Curating.