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The Casablanca Art School: Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde (1962–1987)
Exhibition guide
Paperback
140 pages, 35 visuals
16.5 x 11.5 cm
English and Arabic
Published by Sharjah Art Foundation
2024
ISBN 978-1-915656-13-1
This publication provides an overview of the exhibition The Casablanca Art School: Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde (1962–1987), organised with Tate St Ives and in collaboration with Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. The Sharjah iteration includes 44 additional works and archival pieces, including materials from the Galerie l’Atelier, the first contemporary art gallery in Morocco, as well as a section paying homage to the High Atlas region and its rich Amazigh heritage, which had a fundamental influence on the Casablanca artists.
The exhibition builds on the Foundation’s collaborative project researching the Casablanca Art School, organised with KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, in partnership with ThinkArt, Casablanca; Goethe-Institut Marokko; Zamân Books & Curating; and IFA, Berlin.
The guide includes a foreword by Hoor Al Qasimi, Foundation director, and an introduction about the School by the exhibition’s curator, Morad Montazami.
In the exhilaration following Moroccan independence in 1956, staff and students at the Casablanca Art School (CAS) fomented an artistic revolution. They integrated abstract art with African and Amazigh traditions, taking inspiration from the region’s rugs, jewellery, calligraphy and painted ceilings. Declaring a new art for Morocco grown from Afro-Amazigh heritage, they created a cultural uprising that spread into the future.
Book your tickets to this exhibition here.
Marking the opening of The Casablanca Art School: Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde (1962–1987), exhibition co-curator Morad Montazami (curator, publisher and director, Zamân Books & Curating) and moderator May Alqaydi (Assistant Curator, Sharjah Art Foundation) discuss the transformative legacy of the Casablanca Art School.
Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, established the Foundation in 2009 as a catalyst and advocate for the arts in Sharjah, in the region and around the world.
