Farid Belkahia: Eroticism in Malhoun
Farid Belkahia's creative achievements and active personal interventions have transformed the modern art movement in Morocco since the early 1960s. He is among the pioneers who developed a new visual vocabulary of iconography, symbolism and technique. He grew up at a time when the struggle for national independence was at its peak and the intellectual ferment, which accompanied it, was enormous. Belkahia, born in 1934 in Marrakech, studied at the Ecole des Beaux-arts in Paris from 1955 to 1959, at the Theatre Institute in Prague until 1962 and later, in 1965, at the Academy Brera in Milan, Italy. Between 1962 and 1974 he became the director of the Ecole de Beaux-arts in Casablanca, where he continues to work and live. Upon his return to Morocco from Prague in 1962, Belkahia and other artists like Mohammed Melehi, Gharbaoui, and Cherkaoui rebelled against the structural anachronisms and provincial character of the art scene. Responding to the local situation, this group of artists promoted a new movement at the Ecole des Beaux-arts (the School of Fine Art) under the directorship of Belkahia. This movement saw itself as the artistic conscience of the