Self-taught, free with colour, indifferent to academic perspective: Moroccan naive painting has been praised, contested and collected for more than half a century. Here is what a collector should know about it.
Painters without a school
From the 1950s onwards, painters who had never set foot in an art school began to exhibit. Mohamed Ben Allal (1928–1995) and Ahmed Louardiri (1928–1974) are its first great names. Their technique is simple and their colour generous; they do not try to master perspective or anatomy, and draw their subjects from daily life: the hammam, the souk, the street, the Koranic school, religious festivals.
These painters were not isolated from the art of their time: Ben Allal knew Jacques Azéma, and Louardiri frequented a painter’s studio in Rabat.
Chaïbia and the women painters
Chaïbia Talal (1929–2004) gave the movement its most famous name while refusing to be confined to it: she claimed an affinity with CoBrA and with art brut. Like her, Fatima Hassan El Farouj (1945–2011) and Radia Bent Lhoucine began painting in the studio of a husband or a son. Fatna Gbouri (1924–2012), whose paintings unfold like frescoes of Moroccan life, is another major figure of this generation.
A contested label
In the 1960s, the painters of the Casablanca School, Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Melehi among them, criticised naive painting as turned away from the avant-garde. The word itself is debated. The philosopher Moulim El Aroussi traces it back to the academic hierarchy that set trained artists against those who had not studied; the painter Fouad Bellamine sees in it a spontaneous expression close to art brut, but one that, unlike art brut, delights in detail.
The recurring motifs speak of a deeper heritage: saturated compositions, the symbolism of numbers such as five and seven, kinship with painting on wood and on glass. For several observers, this painting preserves something of Morocco’s oral tradition.
Essaouira, a second wave
From the 1990s, after Frédéric Damgaard opened a gallery devoted to them, self-taught painters from Essaouira came to the fore, among them Regragui Bouslai, Saïd Ouarzaz, Houssein Miloudi and Mohamed Tabal. Their work, dense with signs and figures, is often grouped under the label “Essaouira school”, a label critics themselves use with caution.
Collecting naive painting today
The movement’s historic names are now sought after, and that attention brings its share of imitations: before buying a work attributed to Chaïbia or to a pioneer, read our guide to authenticating a Moroccan painting.
Contemporary painters carry the vein forward in their own voice. Discover the naive paintings available at the gallery, by artists such as Fatima Diouani and Abderrahim Trifis, to see at ARTWORKS gallery in Casablanca or to order with free delivery across Morocco.