Mohamed Melehi was a multi-media artist who dedicated his life to art and excelled in reinvigorating Morocco’s post-colonial contemporary art scene. Born in the coastal town of Asilah in 1936, it is evident his formative years left long lasting impression on the artist, as it would inspire his most recognisable motif, the waves.

By the early 1980s Melehi had reached artistic maturity and the significant changes made to his output in this period reflect this. This period which was perhaps the most productive and important period in Melehi’s artistic career marked the departure from the flat and soft-edge surface exhibited in his works from the prior decade. The artist would combine his signature and abstract motif of the waves with representation, in the shape of a crescent moon, as evidenced in the present lot. Untitled, 1981 perfectly illustrates Melehi’s innovation in this period, the work is split into four tiers, consisting of hard-edge grey and purple colour fields, which aid in framing the undulated waves and the moon. The interplay between abstraction and representation, coupled with the hard-edge colour fields help create an illusion of depth in the work.

Untitled, 1981 featured in the most recent exhibition of works by Mohamed Melehi titled New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School. A well-received spectacle, the exhibition toured three continents, and was kicked off by the artist’s first UK retrospective at the Mosaic Rooms in London in 2019. The exhibition then travelled to MACAAL, in Marrakesh and concluded in 2020, the final leg of its journey at Concrete at AlSerkal Avenue in Dubai. New Waves cemented the legacy of Melehi and further affirmed the position and perception of his works within a global context.

The innate curiosity of Melehi led the artist to seek out knowledge and the constantly ameliorating approach to art outside of Morocco. Following the Revolution of the King and the People, Melehi graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts, Tétouan, Morocco in 1955. The artist then continued his fine art studies in Europe through the late 1950s, and in 1962, he travelled to the United States to take up the position of assistant professor in the painting department at Minneapolis Institute of Art. After one semester, a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation facilitated the artist’s move to New York to study at Columbia University. This move to New York proved to be instrumental in the development of Melehi's oeuvre. Inspired by the city and the non-traditional approach to art adopted by artists around him, Melehi’s signature motif, the waves, which harked back to his formative years in Asilah, first made its appearance at this time. Melehi’s innovation in New York established his name in the US and culminated in the inclusion of his works in two influential group shows in 1963, the Hard Edge and Geometric Painting and Sculpture exhibition at MoMA and Formalists at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art.

The grant from the Rockefeller Foundation stipulated Melehi's return to Morocco on completion of his studies, to apply what he had learned in the West. Upon his return in 1964, Melehi joined the Casablanca School of Fine Arts, where he was a professor until 1969. During his professorship at the Casablanca School, Melehi collaborated with artists and activists, such as Farid Belkahia and Mohammed Chabâa, in revolutionising the faculty’s curriculum. Together, they pioneered modern abstract painting and revitalised the contemporary art scene in Morocco, impressing upon their students the importance of amalgamating Modernist ideas with local sources, such as Amazigh rugs, leatherwork, tattoos and jewellery.

This process of revitalising the contemporary art scene in Morocco expanded beyond the period of his professorship at the Casablanca school. In 1978, Melehi partnered with Mohamed Benaissa, the mayor of his hometown Asilah to establish the Al Mouhit Cultural Association, a non-political organisation, with purely cultural objectives. This culminated in the formation of the Cultural Mussem of Asilah, a yearly arts festival. The festival is held till this day, and is famed for its ephemeral outdoor murals, many of which were painted by Melehi. Asilah, a small town with a population of 30,000 people saw a growth in the number of visitors to the town during the inaugural festival. The project was successful in revitalising Asilah, as well as demystifying de facto art.

Bibliography:
Michael Gauthier, Melehi, 2019, p. 116-140
Mohamed Melehi in conversation with Morad Montazami at The Mosaic Rooms, London, 6 June 2019, http://www.thirdtext.org/melehi-montazami
Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, Barjeel Art Foundation, Sky Over The East Works from the Collection of Barjeel Art Foundation International Museum Day 2014 , p. 74