LONDON.- To complete the tenth anniversary modernist series The Mosaic Rooms presents New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School, the first exhibition in the UK dedicated to Moroccan artist Mohamed Melehi (b. 1936). This display of unseen paintings, posters, photographs and archival material will look at three significant periods of Melehi’s career.

Firstly the exhibition explores the period 1957 to 1963 during the artist’s encounter with a cosmopolitan post-war art scene principally between Rome and New York, two cities where Melehi sharpens his very singular appropriation of hard edge painting.

The exhibition moves on to the period 1963 to 1975 when, fulfilled by his participation in the New York art scene, Melehi nevertheless chooses to return to a post-colonial Morocco. There he triggers a cultural and artistic revolution at the École des Beaux-Arts of Casablanca with artists Farid Belkhahia (1934–2014) and Mohamed Chabâa (1935–2013).

Finally the exhibition investigates the 1980s when the artist’s knowledge of Moroccan popular craft and architecture is invested in a series of pivotal works “reframing” the waves through neo-decorative structures and panels.

The exhibition will reveal Melehi’s key role in the local development of art pedagogy and experimental practices in Morocco as well as his significant work in graphic design and mural painting which has contributed heavily in shaping the aesthetics of significant artistic networks and political causes throughout the Maghreb and the Pan-Arab alliances.

Melehi’s work has featured in numerous solo exhibitions including a retrospective at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, 1995 and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, 1984. He has participated in group shows in Casablanca, Tangiers, Rabat, Marrakech, Baghdad, Algiers, London, Paris, Rome, Zurich, New York, Chicago and Montreal as well as the Marrakech Biennale 2016. His work is held in international museum collections such as Centre Georges Pompidou, Beaubourg, Paris, Tate Modern, London, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, MOMA, New York, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha.

New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School is the final exhibition in a series at The Mosaic Rooms highlighting modernists from the Arab world and Iran, entitled Cosmic Roads: Relocating Modernism, curated by Morad Montazami with assistant curator Madeleine de Colnet.