The School of Fine Arts of Casablanca (, ) is a fine arts school established in 1919 in
Casablanca,
Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...
.
It was the origin of the nativist modernist Casablanca School art movement led by faculty members
Farid Belkahia,
Mohamed Melehi
Mohammed Melehi (; 12 November 1936 – 28 October 2020) was a Moroccan painter associated with the Casablanca school, a modernist art movement active in the 1960s in Morocco.
Early life
Melehi was born Asilah, Morocco. He studied at the Schoo ...
, and
Mohamed Chabâa in the 1960s.
History
The institution was founded in 1919 by a French
Orientalist painter named
Édouard Brindeau de Jarny Édouard is both a French given name and a surname, equivalent to Edward in English. Notable people with the name include:
* Édouard Balladur (born 1929), French politician
* Édouard Boubat (1923–1999), French photographer
* Édouard Colonne ( ...
, who started his career teaching drawing at
Lycée Lyautey
In France, secondary education is in two stages:
* ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 15.
* ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children between ...
.
Resident General
Hubert Lyautey
Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey (17 November 1854 – 27 July 1934) was a French Army general and colonial administrator. After serving in Indochina and Madagascar, he became the first French Resident-General in Morocco from 1912 to 1925. Early in ...
tasked Brindeau and with cataloguing Moroccan visual heritage to inform the guidelines for vocational schools and the reform of traditional industries.
Brindeau convinced Resident General Lyautey and , director of public education under the
French Protectorate, to establish a school of fine arts in Casablanca's medina. In the beginning, students learned
applied arts
The applied arts are all the arts that apply design and decoration to everyday and essentially practical objects in order to make them aesthetically pleasing."Applied art" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of Art''. Online edition. Oxford Univ ...
for architecture, interior design, decoration, and architectural landscaping, in addition to drawing, painting, art history, and math.
The school also hosted (open workshops) for European and Moroccan artists and craftsmen, as well as students and instructors from other institutions.
Abdeslam Ben Larbi el Fassi, whom described as "the first Modern Moroccan artist," was one of the school's first students.
The school was overseen by the municipality chief, four members of the municipal council, and the director of
Lycée Lyautey
In France, secondary education is in two stages:
* ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 15.
* ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for children between ...
.
They chose the rules, appointed the director, and required that all instructors held French nationality.
A small number of sons of Moroccan notables were admitted, and they were not allowed to participate in any exhibitions without his consent.
The school promoted itself by advertising that graduates could become "art instructors, advertising designers, interior decorators, typesetters, and builders of ''maquettes''."
In his book ''Art in the Service of Colonialism'',
Hamid Irbouh writes that Moroccan students were trained to become "technicians to assist French architects."
It pushed Moroccan students toward becoming master craftsmen, studying ceramics, architectural drafting, and interior decoration, while pushing French students toward fine arts and to apply to
''Écoles des Beaux-Arts'' in France.
Casablanca School
Farid Belkahia became the director of the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca in 1962. From 1964-1972, the Nativist
Casablanca School, composed of Belkahia and faculty members
Mohammed Melehi and
Mohamed Chabâa, worked toward what Belkahia described as a "democratization" of the art curriculum.
The curriculum incorporated heavy use of local traditional crafts in their art and worked with their instructors on projects.
According to
Salah M. Hassan, the Casablanca 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."
In 1969, the Casablanca School held an entitled "" in the
Jemaa el-Fnaa
Jemaa el-Fnaa ( ar, ساحة جامع الفناء ''Sāḥat Jāmiʾ al-Fanāʾ'', also Jemaa el-Fna, Djema el-Fna or Djemaa el-Fnaa) is a square and market place in Marrakesh's medina quarter (old city). It remains the main square of Marrakesh, ...
of Marrakesh, displaying their work in public.
Notable faculty
Notable faculty members of the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca:
*
Farid Belkahia
*
Mohamed Melehi
Mohammed Melehi (; 12 November 1936 – 28 October 2020) was a Moroccan painter associated with the Casablanca school, a modernist art movement active in the 1960s in Morocco.
Early life
Melehi was born Asilah, Morocco. He studied at the Schoo ...
*
Mohamed Chabâa
Notable alumni
Notable alumni of the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca include:
* Abdelakabir Faradjallah of the band,
Attarazat Addahabia
*
Malika Agueznay
*
Meryem Aboulouafa
*
Ikram Kabbaj
*
Majida Khattari (diploma in 1988)
[{{Cite web, last=Renard, first=Johanna, date=2013, title=Majida Khattari, url=https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/majida-khattari/, url-status=live, access-date=2021-04-16, website=Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions (AWARE), publisher=Dictionnaire universel des créatrices, language=en-US]
References
Art schools in Morocco
French colonial empire
Buildings and structures in Casablanca
1919 establishments in Morocco