In Casablanca this October, the history of Moroccan painting is not hung in a single museum: it is scattered across the city. The national exhibition '60 ans de peinture au Maroc' has arrived for its second stage, in four venues at once.
The dates overlap. The mediatheque of the Hassan II Mosque hosted it from 3 to 17 October; the École supérieure des beaux-arts de Casablanca (ESBAC) shows it from 6 to 25 October, Galerie Nadar from 7 to 30 October and Galerie Mine d'Art from 8 to 28 October. According to Infomédiaire, more than 160 artists of several generations take part at ESBAC alone, where critics Abdellah Cheikh and Benyounes Aamirouche spoke at a public meeting.
The project is led by the Syndicat marocain des artistes plasticiens professionnels (SMAPP), with the culture department of the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication, under the High Patronage of King Mohammed VI. It follows '50 ans de peinture au Maroc', held in 2015, and is designed to travel: Rabat, Casablanca, then Tangier, Marrakech and Laâyoune.
In Rabat, from 6 to 29 January, the show brought together 150 artists across four sites, from the Bab Rouah national gallery to the Bank Al-Maghrib museum. Diptyk followed its lines of force, the persistence of abstraction and the so-called 'school of the sign', with pioneers such as Mohamed Hamidi, of the Casablanca Group, and Malika Agueznay.
The magazine also noted the limits: an uneven hang, missing labels, and figuration and works on paper given little room. A touring survey cannot write the final history of a national art; it can, city by city, return it to its public.
