
Casablanca Art School: Progressive African Post-Colonialism in Art //Exhibition in Frankfurt/Germany_deutsch/english
Geschichte wird oft gemacht, wenn die richtigen Leute zur richtigen Zeit am richtigen Ort sind. Diese schicksalhafte Alchemie bestimmt die Geschichte der bahnbrechenden Künstler, die die moderne Kunst im postkolonialen Marokko revolutionierten.
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Ausgangspunkt dieser Bewegung war die Kunstschule von Casablanca (CAS), die radikale Veränderungen erfuhr, nachdem der Künstler Farid Belkahia 1962 im Alter von 28 Jahren die Leitung der Schule übernommen hatte, sechs Jahre nachdem Marokko seine Unabhängigkeit von der französischen Herrschaft erlangt hatte.
Nur wenige Jahre nach der Unabhängigkeit Marokkos 1956 entwickelt sich in Casablanca ein pulsierendes Zentrum kultureller Erneuerung. Die Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt präsentiert das einzigartige und einflussreiche Wirken der Casablanca Art School in einer ersten großen, längstüberfälligen Ausstellung. Die Hauptvertreter*innen dieserinnovativen Kunsthochschule, Farid Belkahia (1934–2014), Mohammed Chabâa (1935–2013), Bert Flint (1931–2022), Toni Maraini
(*1941) und Mohamed Melehi (1936–2020), werden zusammen mit Studierenden, Lehrendenund assoziierten Künstler*innen schnell zu einem Motor für die Entwicklung einer postkolonialen modernen Kunst in der Region. Ihr Anliegen ist die Öffnung zu den lokalen künstlerischenTraditionen und zur neuen sozialen Wirklichkeit. Unter anderem im Dialog mit den Ideen des Bauhaus wird das Verhältnis zwischen Kunst, Handwerk, Design und Architektur im lokalen Kontext neu bestimmt, künstlerische Einflüsse aus westlichen Metropolen werden mit Elementen des während der Kolonialzeit unterdrückten lokalen Kulturerbes kombiniert.
Nach seiner Rückkehr von seinen Studien in Paris und Prag ging Belkahia an die pädagogische Praxis mit dem Geist des transnationalen Aktivismus heran, der seine künstlerische Praxis durchdrungen hatte – Gemälde aus den frühen 1960er Jahren, die an die Figurationen von Klee und Dubuffet erinnern, unterstützten die algerische Unabhängigkeit und die kubanische Revolution.
Entschlossen, den kolonialen Einfluss der Franzosen auf die Kunsterziehung in Marokko zu brechen, der die Bedeutung des traditionellen Handwerks schmälerte, revolutionierte Belkahia den Lehrplan und die Struktur der Schule, um regionale handwerkliche Fähigkeiten mit modernen Anwendungen zu verbinden. Wie er bekanntlich sagte, ist Tradition die Zukunft.
Die Schirn präsentiert rund 100 Werke von 22 Künstler*innen, darunter großformatige abstrakte Gemälde, urbane Wandbilder, Kunsthandwerk, Grafiken, Innenarchitektur und Typografie, dazu selten gezeigte Filme, Zeitschriften und Fotografien. Sichtbar wird eine spezifisch marokkanischeKunstszene, die sich transnational verortet.
Sebastian Baden, Direktor der Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, über die Ausstellung: „Dies ist die erste institutionelle Ausstellung, die das einflussreiche Vermächtnis der Casablanca Art Schoolumfassend vorstellt. Nach der Unabhängigkeit Marokkos gestalteten die Lehrenden und Studierenden der Kunsthochschule von Casablanca einen besonderen Ort für das Kunstschaffen und Kunststudium. Ihr Ziel war es, die Kunst zu dekolonisieren und zu liberalisieren, ihre Werkeplatzierten sie mit Zeitschriften, Wandgemälden im öffentlichen Raum und Festivals unmittelbar in den Alltag der Menschen. Es ist an der Zeit für eine umfassende Würdigung dieser international
vernetzten, wichtigen künstlerischen Bewegung. Diese Schau erweitert die bisherige westliche Deutung der Entwicklung der modernen abstrakten Malerei um eine neue, internationale Perspektive und trägt damit zur Ausdifferenzierung des kunsthistorischen Kanons bei.“
Das auch als ‚Casablanca-Gruppe‘ bekannte legendäre Kollektiv entwickelte sich zu einem internationalen Netzwerk, das Generationen überspannte. Diese marokkanische ‚neue Welle‘ rief eine neue Kunst für Marokko aus, die aus dem afro-amazighischen Erbe erwuchs und eine urbane, soziale und kulturelle Bewegung auslöste.
Texten und Essays. Kurzzeitig lehrte auch André Elbaz an der SchuLE:
EINE POSTKOLONIALE AVANTGARDE 1962–1987
12. JULI – 13. OKTOBER 2024
ENGLISH VERSION
History is often made when the right people end up in the right place at the right time. That fateful alchemy defines the story of the trailblazing artists who revolutionised modern art in post-colonial Morocco.
The locus of this movement was the Casablanca Art School (CAS), which underwent radical changes after artist Farid Belkahia took on the school’s directorship in 1962 at age 28, six years after Morocco gained independence from French rule.
Only a few years after Morocco’s independence in 1956, a vibrant center of cultural renewal developed in Casablanca. The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents the unique and influential work of the Casablanca Art School in a first major, long overdue exhibition. The main representatives of this innovative art 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, quickly became a driving force for the development of post-colonial modern art in the region. Their aim was to open up to local artistic traditions and the new social reality. In dialog with the ideas of the Bauhaus, among others, the relationship between art, crafts, design and architecture is redefined in the local context.
artistic influences from Western metropolises are combined with elements of the local cultural heritage that was suppressed during the colonial era.
Returning from his studies in Paris and Prague, Belkahia approached the practice of pedagogy with the spirit of transnational activism that infused his artistic practice—early 1960s paintings recalling the figurations of Klee and Dubuffet supported Algerian independence and the Cuban Revolution.
Determined to break the French colonialist grip on arts education in Morocco, which diminished the importance of traditional crafts, Belkahia revolutionised the school’s curriculum and structure to synthesise regional artisanal skills with modern applications. As he famously said, tradition is the future.
Soon rejecting canvas and paint in favour of contextual materials like copper and animal hide, Belkahia opened classes to women and brought in teachers whose approaches to fine and applied arts integrated traditions that define Morocco as a trans-cultural space.
Art historian and anthropologist Toni Maraini joined CAS in 1964 to devise Morocco’s first modern art-history course, which was attuned to the contextual specificities of Morocco as an international region bridging the Mediterranean, the Arab world, and Africa. The same year, Mohamed Melehi became a visual arts professor at the school, followed by anthropologist Bert Flint in 1965, who led classes on Arab, Amazigh, Islamic, and Mediterranean heritage. Artist Mohammed Chabâa came on board in 1966.
These five figures form the locus of The Casablanca Art School (27 May 2023–14 January 2024) at Tate St Ives curated by Madeleine de Colnet and Morad Montazami in conjunction with Tate St Ives Director Anne Barlow and assistant curator Giles Jackson: the first museum show in the U.K. to explore the legacy of CAS organised in collaboration with Sharjah Art Foundation.
In Melehi’s distinctive compositions, bold, dynamic stripes and waves line up in and against complementary and contrasting colours and grounds, as is the case with one untitled 1983 painting.
An irregular swell composed of orange, yellow, grey, and purple stripes cuts horizontally across a lime green ground sectioned by a thin, central column of blue and white stripes that extend outwards once they reach the image’s top and bottom edges.
Chabâa and Melehi were well acquainted. They studied at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tétouan, graduating in 1955, and saw each other in Rome, where Chabâa enrolled in the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma and apprenticed with engineer and architect Pier Luigi Nervi.
Indeed, they co-designed the democratic and decolonial cultural journal Souffles, established in 1966 by Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi and banned in 1972, when Chabâa was imprisoned as a Marxist activist and Laâbi for cultural activism. They also designed the invitation card and poster for the 1978 International Art Exhibition for Palestine, organised by the Palestine Liberation Organization in Beirut. The connections between Melehi and Chabâa are striking in their resonant yet distinctive aesthetics. Also employing bright colours shaped into curves, waves, and stripes, Chabâa’s compositions are more complex than Melehi’s, if not more irregular in their geometries.
Two untitled acrylic-on-canvas works by Chabâa from 1977, for example, depict an intersection of distilled patterns that recall Wassily Kandinsky‘s exuberant jazz-age abstractions, only this time filtered through a singular, graphic hard-edge pop sensibility. The connections between Melehi and Chabâa are striking in their resonant yet distinctive aesthetics.
Chabâa, who described the poster as ‘a painting that is accessible to all’, incorporated Arabic calligraphy into classes exploring typography, graphic design, craft, and interior design. His approach reflected the cue that Casablanca Art School took from both the Bauhaus school and Maghrebi artisanal traditions, collapsing distinctions between art and design.
Both Chabâa and Melehi’s influence can be seen in the work of CAS student Malika Agueznay, who participated in the 1968 annual Casablanca Art School exhibition, a landmark show that demonstrated the impact the new Casablanca Art School was having on its students.
In 1974, the final year of Belkahia’s CAS directorship, the first pan-Arab Biennial took place at Baghdad’s Museum of Modern Art in Iraq. Works by 14 artists related to CAS stood out among more than 600 artworks on view, announcing Morocco as the centre of a new wave in Arab modernity. In keeping, CAS artists became key protagonists in organising the second pan-Arab Biennial held in Rabat, Morocco, between 1976 and 1977.
Although many teachers associated with Belkahia’s tenure had left CAS by then, the influence of the pedagogical revolution in Moroccan art that he and his colleagues instigated extended well beyond the school itself.
In 1978, Mohamed Benaïssa and Melehi co-founded the Asilah festival, which sought to instigate positive and sustainable development in northern Morocco, through street and gallery exhibitions, community mural projects, lectures, and concerts involving artists from Africa, the Arab world, Asia, Europe, and the United States.
Toni Maraini led children’s workshops for that first event: ‘We wanted to reach the general public where they live, in a casual and accessible way,’ she explained.
Benaïssa later became Morocco’s Minister of Culture, among other appointments. In 2004, he recalled the children who experienced the festival’s launch, who had by then reached their thirties. This was ‘a generation who has opened its eyes and has been influenced by art,’ Benaïssa said, ‘as a medium to enjoy life, and also to mobilise the resources of imagination and creativity.’3In keeping with the fusion of art and life that CAS encouraged, the festival continues to this day.
The exhibition in Frankfurt shows this great development until 13th of October.

