“Farid Belkahia- Graphic works: Prints, engravings, lithographs, serigraphs” is the theme of an exhibition to be held from July 10 to August 30, at the “Mathaf” Farid Belkahia Museum in Marrakech. the Farid Belkahia Foundation announced on Friday.
According to the Farid Belkahia Foundation, this exhibition reveals one of the facets of the late artist’s graphic work, little known but which is nevertheless so fruitful and so poetic.
The exhibition is a retrospective of the works of the late Farid Belkahia which is currently presented at the National Museum of Modern Art at the Center Pompidou, in Paris, and which gives pride of place to his graphic work.
For the late artist, the practice of drawing was a daily passion and his graphic production was important, both numerically and by the lighting it allowed to pose on his work and his life.
The many drawings accumulated by the artist are like a reserve of forms and ideas (….), But also like a desire which is explored through a multitude of processes.
The late Farid Belkahia, wanting to share this passion with as many people as possible, had recourse to prints which allowed him to print a limited number of copies, works identically or enhanced by hand.
It is this production of prints that the Farid Belkahia Foundation highlights today, by bringing together an exceptional set of prints that it presents to the public under the title “Prints of Farid Belkahia”.
We discover prints obtained by different reproduction processes, such as engraving, lithography and screen printing, but also monotypes or even digital processes that have recently appeared, explains the Farid Belkahia Foundation, noting that these delicate prints are linked to the intimate, felt or poetic, but also these artists’ books combining text and images, and portfolios which are often designed in collaboration with the poet friends of the late Farid Belkahia.
Farid Belkahia (1934-2014), considered to be one of the founders of contemporary art in Morocco, from the sixties carried out artistic research with multiple expressions and a fundamental work of reflection on new avenues of access to modernity.
For more than sixty years, he has carved out an artistic furrow punctuated by ruptures, challenges and daring renewal.
Advocating a freedom to create in perpetual reconquest, he has developed a work in resonance with his natural and cultural environment.
A pioneer of contemporary and modern art in Morocco, Farid Belkahia became very early on and with commitment, an ambassador of the artistic continuity of Morocco, by making the relationship between living tradition and modernity his axis of thought.
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