Mohamed Melehi's work will be part of the upcoming Biennale Arte 2024 – the 60th Edition of the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
The 60th International Art Exhibition, titled Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere, will be held from 20 April to 24 November 2024, at the Giardini and the Arsenale, curated by Adriano Pedrosa and organized by La Biennale di Venezia.
Mohamed Melehi (1936–2020) was a painter, graphic designer, teacher, muralist, cultural activist and a pivotal and leading figure for postcolonial Moroccan art. Alongside peers Farid Belkahia and Mohammed Chabâa, Melehi was an influential figure in Moroccan modernism and a key member of The Casablanca Art School, an avant-garde group that radically questioned cosmopolitan abstraction and art pedagogy within the context of colonialism. His work resists the East/West divide, resulting in a dialogue between popular and traditional Moroccan craft. Melehi's work is also connected to the hard edge painters of the 1960s.
In the last decade his work gained greater attention internationally, and was collected by the Tate, the Pompidou in Paris, MoMA in New York and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, where Melehi was the subject of a survey show in 2017. His works were recently a part of the Casablanca Art School group exhibition at Tate St Ives (27 May 2023 – 14 January 2024) curated by Morad Montazami., in collaboration with Sharjah Art Foundation, where the exhibition will open from 28 February – 16 June 2024.
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