Farid Belkahia (Morocco, Born 1934) Étude Sur Le Malheur Diameter: 77Cm ,1998.0
Provenance : [Propriété non datée]
- The present work is an beautiful and exemplary example from Farid Belkahia, a supreme figure in Morroccan modernism who will be honored with a solo retrospective at the Centre Pompidou later this year
- Belkahia's reached his artistic maturity roughly at the same time that his native Morocco achieved independence from French rule
- He was determined to take an uncompromising artistic stand, embodied, as early as 1963, by his imperative need to compete against Western influence with the definition of a specifically Moroccan modernity
- The result was his radical and definitive break with easel painting and the oil painting medium
- From then on, Belkahia showed a clear preference for traditional materials, such as copper and ram's skin
- This was a celebration of Morocco's pre-colonial, multicultural past, as were his many references to Amazigh (Berber) and African material culture (tifinagh signs from the script of the Amazigh language, patterns of Amazigh carpets, tattoos) and to traditional techniques, such as henna and walnut stain dyes, and the treatment of raw skin
- The use of these materials propelled him to make non-figurative works, developing shapes in volumes that sat between two-dimensional works and sculptural objects, which entered the viewer's space
