Painter
Ahmed Cherif Machichi
Critics long called him “the painter of movement”: from the people of southern Morocco to the Zaian fantasias, since the 1960s Ahmed Chérif Machichi has composed scenes in which every figure seems caught mid-gesture.
The artist
Career
Born in Casablanca in 1942, Ahmed Chérif Machichi trained at the city’s École des Beaux-Arts from 1961 to 1964, then followed courses at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1965 to 1967. He held his first exhibition in 1964, at the municipal gallery of Casablanca.
An international career followed: group exhibitions in Leipzig (1972), Tunis (1974) and at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1977); solo exhibitions in Paris (1977), in Amman at the invitation of the Jordanian Minister of Culture (1978), at the Bab Rouah gallery in Rabat (1986), in Hamburg (1988) and in Puerto Banús (1990). In 1975 he painted the Green March; the work was presented to King Hassan II. He also painted the future King Mohammed VI in uniform, shortly before his accession to the throne.
The painter of movement
His painting draws on the Orientalist tradition while looking at the people of the Moroccan south almost as an anthropologist would: a scribe kneeling among villagers, a woman carrying a jug of water. Like the painters of the Italian Renaissance, he works light, colour, perspective and detail with patience, sometimes spending more than three weeks on a single canvas. Most of his scenes are imagined rather than posed. Drawn to the moussems of the Zaian horsemen, he has devoted a series to the fantasia.
Exhibitions (selection)
- 1964: first exhibition, municipal gallery, Casablanca
- 1972: group exhibition, Leipzig
- 1974: group exhibition, Tunis
- 1976: exhibition, Montreal
- 1977: group exhibition, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; solo exhibition, Paris
- 1978: solo exhibition, Amman
- 1979: Brussels International Fair
- 1986: solo exhibition, Bab Rouah gallery, Rabat
- 1988: solo exhibition, Hamburg
- 1992: exhibition of painters from the Arab world, Cairo
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In the same spirit
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