Traditional carving
Visible throughout Morocco, this ancestral technique consists of sculpting plaster by integrating its motifs into the architecture. Decorative, it satisfies the ban on figurative representation in Islamic art. The gebs covers the upper part of the walls, but also decorates the arcades, ceilings and domes. Calligraphic texts or geometric motifs are displayed: friezes, interlacing or rosettes. In the Great Moroccan South, the many museums of crafts and traditions are nestled in richly decorated buildings. Thus, the Museum of the ksar in Oulad Edriss occupies the old house of the village chief. Its inner courtyard, arcades and towers are perfect examples of the elegance of the gebs.
White or pinkish, the stucco can be stained, painted or gilded. Such results are achieved through a long and meticulous manufacturing process. First, the plaster is spread in a thick layer on the wall surface, bristling with nails for a better hold. The drying time of the plaster being relatively long, the masters have all the leisure to sculpt the material with an unequalled refinement.
Emergence of painting
Two events mark the pictorial memory of the country: the Islamization of Morocco in the ninth century and colonization from 1912. Pre-Islamic art, which gives an important place to representations of life scenes, is seen, with the Islamization, dominated by the Arab-Muslim art which prohibits any form of zoomorphic or human representation. Of an infinite richness, it finds its expression in the forms and the complex geometrical reasons, the representations of the vegetable world and the calligraphy. Calligraphers write with a calamus, a reed pen whose size determines the style of writing. As for the ink, it is traditionally made from the soot of candles.
Easel painting was adopted later, at the beginning of the protectorate. It is in a way a return to the sources since it revives the representation of scenes of everyday life. The period of the French protectorate is evoked at the Museum of Resistance and the Liberation Army, in Ouarzazate, through photographs and portraits of the Alaouite dynasty, from the seventeenth century to the present.
The twentieth century saw the emergence of talents that circumvented religious prohibitions. The opening of the first Moroccan art schools, from 1945, gave an undeniable impetus to artistic life.
Naive art
Naive art developed throughout the 20th century, reaching its peak in the 1960s and 1970s. The two masters of this trend are Mohammed Ben Ali R'Bati (1861-1939) who represented all aspects of Tangier life, and Mohamed Hamri (1932-2000). Hamri's more stylized style played a key role in Moroccan painting.
Other painters moved away from figuration to abstraction. Ahmed Cherkaoui (1934-1967), whose fame extends beyond Morocco, is one of the precursors of Moroccan modernism. His work, which was prematurely interrupted, changed the country's artistic history. At the intersection of his Arab and Berber heritage and the major international modern trends, this artist has developed a personal language with a strong symbolic richness.
However, Morocco still lacks places of diffusion. But the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Marrakech became in 2014 the first national institution dedicated to this period. Its collection includes Giacometti, Monet, Cézanne but also Hassan El Glaoui (1923-2018), painter of traditional festivals of yesteryear.
Orientalism
Foreign artists of the 19th and 20th centuries were enchanted by the charm of Moroccan cities. They certainly made Morocco shine, but they overshadowed the local artists. This is how "Orientalist painting" came to include works done by Europeans in Africa, the Near East or Asia. This genre was born at the end of the 19th century, with romantic painters who came to renew their inspiration in Morocco. Their idealized vision is expressed in images with an enchanting atmosphere.
Sent on a mission by King Louis-Philippe, Eugène Delacroix contributed to the propagation of the fashion for oriental exoticism among Romantic painters.
Farid Belkahia (1934-2014)
Born in Marrakech, Belkahia attended cosmopolitan art circles with his father. While still a teenager, he exhibited his first gouaches which already revealed a tendency towards expressionism. He stayed in Paris and then in Prague, and returned marked by the post-war context. Upon his return to Morocco in 1962, he explored the notion of modernity by engaging in various pictorial experiments. He abandoned easel painting in particular.
His curiosity in the aesthetic field opened the way to modern art in Morocco. Appointed director of the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca, he made his students aware of the avant-garde movement. Anxious to link this revival to the Moroccan heritage, he worked with skin and then with copper. Through the choice of materials, he wishes to bring together memory and creative freedom. The Farid Belkahia Foundation with its Mathaf Farid Belkahia Museum exhibits many of his works and supports contemporary creation.
Moroccan photography
In the 19th century, many Europeans who came to document the world took up photography, accompanied by scientists, historians and writers. At a turning point, they captured the first images of a Kingdom still unknown to Westerners. They immortalized its fortified villages, its kasbahs, its mountains and its Saharan provinces. In the 1880s, as the country opened up, photographers set up their studios. Mostly used for administrative and heritage purposes, photography was limited to landscapes and monuments.
Later, a more aesthetic photography developed, with "scenes of types", halfway between ethnographic concern and exoticism. Nevertheless, Muslim Moroccans remained hostile to this art form, which went against the ban on human representation.
Between the wars, the Frenchman Gabriel Veyre, the official photographer of Sultan Mouley Abd el Aziz, played a key role in the development of photography. Author of hundreds of pictures of the country and its inhabitants, he was one of the first to capture the local daily life with naturalness. Visible at the House of Photography in Marrakech, which highlights the diversity of the country through the eyes of famous or anonymous photographers, from the beginnings of photography to the modern era (1879-1960).
In the second half of the twentieth century, photography became more democratic. The country now has many international figures and different exhibition venues, including Gallery 127 in Marrakech. It is now considered an art form in its own right.
Hassan Hajjaj, born in 1961 in Larache, is one of the representatives of Moroccan contemporary photography, in addition to being the pioneer of Moroccan Pop Art. His double culture is expressed in his colorful style, full of pleasant contradictions.
The Belgian-Moroccan photographer Mous Lamrabat (born in 1983) shakes up stereotypes about the Arab world to spread a message of peace through humorous images.
A flourishing contemporary art
The evolution of Moroccan art reflects the changes the country is going through. Figurative art is no longer taboo. The new generation is tackling social and political issues: inequality, sexism, immigration, climate crisis.
Despite the challenges it faces, the country is gradually asserting itself as a regional artistic hub, increasingly connected to its North African and sub-Saharan neighbors. The Arab Spring of 2011 has greatly contributed to this development, not only rekindling foreign interest, but also allowing artists to realize the role they could play in expressing their views through art.
To name just one, Lalla Essaydi, born in 1956 in Marrakech, is a leading artist photographer. She grew up in Morocco and Saudi Arabia, and now lives between New York, Boston and Marrakech. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, she is one of the most highly regarded Moroccan artists. Her paintings can be found in the Louvre and the British Museum in London. Her work focuses on the figure of the Arab woman, deconstructing the female stereotypes represented in Orientalist painting while incorporating Arabic calligraphy.
The Museum of Contemporary African Art Al Maaden in Marrakech, MACAAL has recently honored a current of Sufi artists characterized by their fantastic universe, brimming with imagination. Starting from the street, this current of self-taught artists who draw their inspiration from the street and everyday life, was first spotted by Frederic Damgaard, who opened in 1988 the first gallery in Essaouira, the Damgaard Art Gallery. In this place dedicated to the artists of Essaouira, he exhibited Abdelmalek Berhiss, Mohamed Tabal and Ali Maimoun. Discovering talents, the Matisse Art Gallery brings together references of Moroccan art like Noureddine Chater and Hassan El Glaoui.
Now, theEspace Othello is the second address to visit in Essaouira to discover contemporary painters and sculptors. In the Medina, the multitude of small galleries sometimes annexed to a workshop as in the Blue Tree, testify to the cultural vigor.
Art in the open air
After a period of adaptation, street art nowadays has many young talents such as Kalamour, the duo Placebostudio (composed of Brick top and Abid), Rebel Spirit or Mevok. Now at the forefront of the contemporary scene, Morran Ben Lahcen is a child of graffiti. He is even the pioneer. Born in 1982 in Tahanouat, he expresses his attachment to his roots through abstraction. In Guéliz, the street Oum er-rbia shelters some of his first portraits.
As an instrument of urban revitalization, street art is celebrated during the Marrakech Biennale, which encourages graffiti artists through the Liberty Walls project. Creations by international artists dot the streets of the medina: C215; Hendrik Beikirch; the Italian Run and his geometric characters near the Bahia Palace; and on Dar El Bacha Street, the British artist Sickboy.
In Essaouira, the Mogador Street Art program launched in 2019 combines music and painting. The giant mural The Smiles of Mogador, created in January 2022 by Caterina Tur, pays tribute to the city's children.
Aaron Horkey, Esao Andrews or Andrew Hem have chosen the Moroccan desert, near Ouarzazate, to express themselves. Animals and crazy creatures appear on ruins, in the heart of a lunar landscape. The Great Moroccan South has not finished surprising us!
