Morocco: A Cultural Playground

Morocco is a melting pot where cultural heritages from across the globe come together to present a united, diversified welcome mat to the world. One of the best ways Morocco highlights this is through its cultural landscapes. Visitors take full advantage of this setting by intermingling with residents and soak up all that Morocco has to offer on the cultural front.

Moroccan artists and artwork reflects an element of cultural richness. In order to achieve this, sculptures and paintings have evolved from traditional representations to contemporary creations. Traditional style stills exists. Walk the streets of Morocco to find architecture of homes and other buildings displaying traces of traditional styles. Common every day items portray a hint of traditionalism as well. Morocco tradition is alive and well today.

It is a bit of a challenge for Moroccan artists to come up with creations that exude both styles. Artist Cherkaoui relies on Arabic calligraphy studies and Berber symbolism to create traditional pieces. Common pieces include decorating the human body or other available objects. In doing this, the artist succeeds in capturing an intense vibrant representation of traditional Moroccan style.

Melehi, Belkahia and Chebaa are three artists leading the way towards bringing Moroccan art to the worldwide stage. Each of these individuals taught painting to Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1968 to 1971. Belkahia is renowned for using available resources to portray the possibilities and creating pieces based on individual perception. His pieces showed the artistic community that art exploration could encompass a vast array of possibilities. For example, he would use Moroccan leather as a painting surface as opposed to a traditional canvas–shapes, figures and color accented with natural pigments paints and markers. By doing so, he had modern artists thinking outside the proverbial artistic box.

Kacimi is one artist who took note of this teaching. Artwork and paintings from this artist prominently featured colorful natural pigment figures and shapes on large pieces of canvas. In doing so, the artistic elements gave the illusion of taking flight off the canvas. Following suit, artist Bellamine chose to add dimensions to artwork pieces. Layers of color presented in forms that gave the pieces a transparent nature. This style of artistic painting reflected a creatively deep love by the artist for artwork creations.

Ennadre chose photography as a way to convey his feelings to the artistic world. He snapped photographs of the human body at all available opportunities. This spanned virtually every life aspect from birth to death and everything in between. Ennadre considered his photographic artwork to be a tribute to human life.


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