School of Fine Arts of Casablanca

The institution was founded in 1919 by a French Orientalist painter named Édouard Brindeau de Jarny, who started his career teaching drawing at Lycée Lyautey. Resident General Hubert Lyautey tasked Brindeau and with cataloguing Moroccan visual heritage to inform the guidelines for vocational schools and the reform of traditional industries. From 1964 to 1972, the group of teachers, composed of Belkahia and faculty members Mohammed Melehi and Mohamed Chabâa, worked toward what Belkahia described as a "democratization" of the art curriculum. In 1969, the Casablanca Art School held an entitled "" in the Jemaa el-Fnaa of Marrakesh, displaying their work in public. In 1974, Farid Belkahia asked one of his first students, the artist Abderrahmane Rahoule, who had been a teacher since 1972 and a full member of the Casablanca Group, to take over as director of the Casablanca School of Fine Arts. == Legacy ==

From February to May 2024, the ifa Gallery in Berlin presented an exhibition and accompanying art historical research titled "School of Casablanca" with the aim of highlighting the legacy of the historical Casablanca Art School for contemporary art discourse: From May 2023 to January 2024, Tate St Ives art gallery in Cornwall, UK, and later the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates (February–June 2024), showed an exhibition titled "The Casablanca Art School: Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde (1962-1987)". The same exhibition was presented by the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany, between July and October 2024. This exhibition presented almost 100 works by 22 artists and documents from the historical period of the Casablanca Art School. == Notable faculty ==

Notable faculty members of the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca: • Farid Belkahia • Mohamed Melehi • Mohamed Chabâa • Abderrahmane Rahoule == Notable alumni ==

Notable alumni of the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca include: • Abdelakabir Faradjallah of the band, Attarazat Addahabia • Abderrahmane Rahoule • Malika Agueznay • Meryem Aboulouafa • Ikram Kabbaj • Majida Khattari (diploma in 1988) • • • Rebel Spirit • == References ==