School of Fine Arts of Casablanca

Fine arts school in Casablanca, Morocco

School of Fine Arts of Casablanca

المدرسة العليا للفنون الجميلة بالدار البيضاء
l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Casablanca

Location

20 boulevard Rachidi, Casablanca

Morocco

Coordinates| 33°35′32″N 7°37′24″W﻿ / ﻿33.5921°N 7.6233°W﻿ / 33.5921; -7.6233

The School of Fine Arts of Casablanca (Arabic: المدرسة العليا للفنون الجميلة بالدار البيضاء, French: l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Casablanca) is a Fine arts school established in 1919 in Casablanca, Morocco.[1] It was the origin of the modernist Casablanca School art movement led by faculty members Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Melehi, and Mohamed Chabâa in the 1960s.

## History

[edit]

The institution was founded in 1919 by a French Orientalist painter named Édouard Brindeau de Jarny, who started his career teaching drawing at Lycée Lyautey.[2][1] Resident General Hubert Lyautey tasked Brindeau and Prosper Ricard [fr] with cataloguing Moroccan visual heritage to inform the guidelines for vocational schools and the reform of traditional industries.[1] Brindeau convinced Resident General Lyautey and Georges Hardy [fr], director of public education under the French Protectorate, to establish a school of fine arts in Casablanca's medina. In the beginning, mainly French students studied applied arts for the use in architecture, interior design, decoration, and architectural landscaping, in addition to drawing, painting, art history, and math.[1] The school also hosted ateliers ouverts (open workshops) for European and Moroccan artists and craftsmen, as well as students and instructors from other institutions.[1] Abdeslam Ben Larbi el Fassi, whom Italian art teacher Toni Maraini [fr] described as "the first Modern Moroccan artist," was one of the school's first students.[1]

The school was overseen by the municipality chief, four members of the municipal council, and the director of Lycée Lyautey.[1] They chose the rules, appointed the director, and required that all instructors held French nationality.[1] A small number of sons of Moroccan notables were admitted, and they were not allowed to participate in any exhibitions without his consent.[1] The school promoted itself by advertising that graduates could become "art instructors, advertising designers, interior decorators, typesetters, and builders of maquettes."[1] In his book Art in the Service of Colonialism, Hamid Irbouh writes that Moroccan students were trained to become "technicians to assist French architects."[1] It oriented Moroccan students toward becoming master craftsmen, studying ceramics, architectural drafting, and interior decoration, while orienting French students toward Fine arts and to apply to Écoles des Beaux-Arts in France.[1]

### Casablanca Art School

[edit]

Farid Belkahia became the director of the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca in 1962.[3][4] From 1964 to 1972, the group of teachers, composed of Belkahia and faculty members Mohammed Melehi and Mohamed Chabâa, worked toward what Belkahia described as a "democratization" of the art curriculum.[1] The curriculum incorporated the specific use of local traditional crafts by students, who worked with their instructors on projects.[1] According to art critic Salah M. Hassan, the Casablanca Art School "saw itself as the artistic conscience of the time. It criticized the politics of dependency on foreign cultural missions, at that time the patrons of Moroccan modern art."[5]

In 1969, the Casablanca Art School held an exposition manifeste entitled "Présence Plastique" in the Jemaa el-Fnaa of Marrakesh, displaying their work in public.[6][7] In 1974, Farid Belkahia asked one of his first students, the artist Abderrahmane Rahoule, who had been a teacher since 1972 and a full member of the Casablanca Group, to take over as director of the Casablanca School of Fine Arts.[8]

## Legacy

[edit]

From February to May 2024, the ifa Gallery in Berlin presented an exhibition and accompanying art historical research titled "School of Casablanca" with the aim of highlighting the legacy of the historical Casablanca Art School for contemporary art discourse:[9]

> School of Casablanca highlights a pivotal moment in Moroccan art history that had wide-ranging implications for the entire region. A new civic awareness emerged that impacted both artists and intellectuals seeking to reconsider their social function and visibility in the public sphere. Through this process, the artist became the producer of a social and cultural project in which art was seen as a space of shared knowledge and experience.

— School of Casablanca project, Berlin 2024, [10]

From May 2023 to January 2024, Tate St Ives art gallery in Cornwall, UK, and later the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates (February-June 2024), showed an exhibition titled "The Casablanca Art School: Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde (1962-1987)". The same exhibition was presented by the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, between July and October 2024. This exhibition presented almost 100 works by 22 artists and documents from the historical period of the Casablanca Art School.[11]

## Notable faculty

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Notable faculty members of the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca:

* Farid Belkahia
* Mohamed Melehi
* Mohamed Chabâa
* Abderrahmane Rahoule

## Notable alumni

[edit]

This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article and are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations. (February 2025)

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Notable alumni of the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca include:

* Abdelakabir Faradjallah of the band, Attarazat Addahabia
* Abderrahmane Rahoule
* Malika Agueznay[12]
* Meryem Aboulouafa
* Ikram Kabbaj[13]
* Majida Khattari (diploma in 1988)[14]
* Mounir fatmi [fr]
* Mohammed Arrhioui [es]
* Rebel Spirit[15]
* Fatiha Zemmouri [fr][16]

## References

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1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Irbouh, Hamid. (2013). Art in the Service of Colonialism : French Art Education in Morocco 1912-1966. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1-78076-036-0. OCLC 994563861.
2. ^ Marcilhac, Félix; Majorelle, Jacques (1988). La vie et l'œuvre de Jacques Majorelle: 1886-1962 (in French). www.acr-edition.com. ISBN 978-2-86770-031-6.
3. ^ "Farid Belkahia, incubateur de modernité". Telquel.ma (in French). Retrieved 2020-07-03.
4. ^ "École des Beaux-Arts de Casablanca (1964–1970) - Articles – bauhaus imaginista". www.bauhaus-imaginista.org. Retrieved 2020-07-03.
5. ^ Benchemsi, R. (2001-03-01). "FARID BELKAHIA: Eroticism in Malhoun: Rajae Benchemsi". Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art. 2001 (13–14): 80–85\. doi:10.1215/10757163-13-14-1-80. ISSN 1075-7163.13–14&rft.pages=80-85&rft.date=2001-03-01&rft_id=info:doi/10.1215/10757163-13-14-1-80&rft.issn=1075-7163&rft.aulast=Benchemsi&rft.aufirst=R.&rft_id=http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/10757163-13-14-1-80&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:School+of+Fine+Arts+of+Casablanca" class="Z3988">
6. ^ Basciano, Oliver (2019-04-12). "Give us a swirl: How Mohamed Melehi became Morocco's modernist master". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-07-03.
7. ^ Jaggi, Maya. "Casablanca's Gift to Marrakech and the Birth of Morocco's Modern Art Movement | Maya Jaggi". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 2023-01-16.
8. ^ "CASA · School of Casablanca". School of Casablanca. Retrieved 2024-10-06.
9. ^ "About · School of Casablanca". School of Casablanca. Retrieved 2024-10-06.
10. ^ https://schoolofcasablanca.com/files/school-of-casablanca-booklet.pdf
11. ^ "Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents the first major exhibition on the Casablanca Art School, co-organised by Sharjah Art Foundation and Tate St Ives". sharjahart.org. Retrieved 2024-10-06.
12. ^ "Malika Agueznay - Biography". Loft Art Gallery - Casablanca. Retrieved 2021-11-16.
13. ^ "الفنانة المغربية إكرام القباج تعرض منحوتاتها الجديدة بالدار البيضاء". bayanealyaoume (in Arabic). 2016-09-22. Retrieved 2020-07-03.
14. ^ Renard, Johanna (2013). "Majida Khattari". Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions (AWARE). Dictionnaire universel des créatrices. Retrieved 2021-04-16.
15. ^ "Rebel Spirit - Biography". L'Atelier 21 (in French). Retrieved 2024-10-05.
16. ^ "Biographie | Fatiha Zemmouri" (in French). Retrieved 2023-03-21.

Authority control databases

International|

* VIAF

National|

* Germany