Farid Belkahia
Morocco, 1934
Upon his return to Morocco from study abroad, Belkahia, among other artists such Mohammed Melehi, Gharbaoui, and Cherkaoui, rebelled against the structural anachronisms and provincial character of the art scene. Responding to a historical need and as a reaction to the local situation, this group of artists have become the promoters of a new movement beginning with the Ecole des Beaux Arts (the School of Fine Art) in Casablanca under the directorship of Belkahia after his return from Prague in 1962. This movement saw itself as the artistic conscience of the time. They criticized the politics of dependency on the foreign cultural missions which assumed the role of patronage of the modern art in Morocco.
Together with his colleagues, he organized independent exhibitions and initiated a debate on the theory and practice of art education in Morocco. At the School of Fine Art, he worked very hard to liberalize the syllabus and the teaching system in the school, sparing his students the rigidity of the methods he experienced in France. It is to his credit that Belkahia initiated and pursued a serious research which draw attention to the potent modernity of some forms of the traditional and popular art. He set up workshops at the School on the history and practice of Moroccan traditional crafts, from weaving, carpet and rug-making, and gold or silver jewelry to pottery.
Belkahia's endeavor was motivated by his keen interest in memory which tend to play a central role in his creative process. As he often proclaims, "it is only though our past that we can accede to modernity. I know of no ahistroical modernity." It was in this spirit that he organized the first street exhibition, setting out works in a public square, as he did in Marrakech in 1969 in the square of the Fana'a mosque. It was an experiment which was emulated by several of his colleagues and intended to transcend art as an elitist practice isolated from the rest of other daily social activities, and redeem it as it used to be.
More: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/sh40/Belkahia.html
Person TypeIndividual
United States of America (USA), 1916 - 2005
