Exhibitions
Regards sur l'École de Casablanca
The enduring relevance of a movement that redefined Moroccan artistic modernity.
AA Gallery presents Regards sur l'École de Casablanca (Perspectives on the Casablanca School) , a group exhibition featuring the work of nineteen artists linked to one of the most decisive movements in the development of artistic modernity in Morocco. The exhibition, open to the public until October 15, offers a reinterpretation of the Casablanca School, not as a closed chapter in art history, but as a still-active legacy whose influence continues to resonate in contemporary artistic practices in North Africa.
Far from being merely a historical overview, the exhibition establishes a dialogue between the movement's leading figures and those artists who continued and enriched its aesthetic principles. The exhibition allows visitors to understand how the Casablanca School broke with the academic models inherited from colonialism to assert its own visual identity, deeply connected to artisanal traditions, geometry, Amazigh culture, and the richness of Moroccan folk heritage, without sacrificing a fully contemporary artistic language.
Among the represented artists are fundamental names such as Malika Agueznay, whose research on the sign and the pictorial gesture continues to be an essential reference; Hamid Alaoui, Farid Belkahia, an essential figure in the redefinition of Moroccan abstraction from traditional materials such as copper or leather; Abdellah El Hariri and Hassan Slaoui, along with other protagonists who contributed to expanding the formal and conceptual possibilities of the movement.
The strength of the exhibition lies precisely in avoiding a homogenous interpretation of the Casablanca School. Instead of presenting a univocal narrative, the selection reveals the diversity of sensibilities that coexisted under a shared impulse for renewal. Abstraction, material experimentation, calligraphy, symbolism, and references to architecture and public space engage in dialogue within a body of work that demonstrates that Moroccan modernism was never a mere adaptation of the European avant-garde, but rather an autonomous formulation born from its own cultural context.
More than half a century after its inception, the Casablanca School continues to engage contemporary viewers. At a time when the debate on cultural identities and decolonial narratives occupies a central place in international art institutions, this exhibition reminds us that many of these ideas were anticipated by these artists, who championed a modernity rooted in collective memory and open to exchange with the world.
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