Works of pioneer Moroccan artists
Starting from the end of the 1950’s, some Moroccan artists wanted to break with the Orientalist painting existing in Morocco at that time, as they used to put it in the same category as colonial painting. Thus, they were inspired by an artistic dynamics that advocates a complete freedom of creation and a new abstract aesthetic tradition which does not consider the “accidental” in the work of art as an error.
Painters like Jilali Gharbaoui, Ahmed Cherkaoui, Mohamed Melehi, Omar Bouragba, Farid Belkahia and Karim Bennani opened the way to future generations, by presenting in their works the Moroccan pluralistic cultural identity, in relation to the traditional arts or customs.
In parallel with this new movement, many other self-taught artists, who do not master the notions of perspectives and the representations of characters, such as Mohamed Ben Allal and Ahmed Louardighi, used to use very simple painting techniques presented with very generous coloring.
Since the 60’s, naive painting in Morocco was given a fresh impetus, with a great female artist, Chaïbia Tallal, who brought to fame a certain oral tradition and started a new style which was inherited by Fatima Hassan and Fatna Gbouri.