Mohamed Melehi, Untitled, 2014. Acrylic on canvas, 100×100 cm. Giglio Collection, Piacenza.

Mohamed Melehi was born in 1936 in Asilah, on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, a country still marked by colonial rule. From the outset, his artistic research developed at the intersection of international openness and the construction of a visual language deeply rooted in the Moroccan cultural context.

Melehi is a key figure in Moroccan modern and contemporary art, not only for the iconic power of his work, but also for the central role he played in redefining the relationship between art, public space, and collective identity in the second half of the twentieth century.

After initial artistic training in Morocco, Melehi continued his studies in Europe and the United States. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and subsequently moved to New York, where he came into direct contact with abstract art, Hard Edge painting, and the American modernist movements of the 1960s. This international experience was crucial in defining his formal language, based on pure color, rhythm, and structure, but never translated into a simple adherence to Western models.

Upon his return to Morocco in the early 1960s, Melehi made a fundamental choice: to use the tools of abstract modernity to construct an autonomous aesthetic capable of engaging with local visual culture. Together with Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Chabâa, he actively participated in the birth of the Casablanca School, a collective experience that questioned the idea of ​​art as an elitist practice and promoted a direct connection between artistic creation, craftsmanship, graphic design, and urban space. In this context, Melehi is among the leading proponents of an art designed to be seen and experienced in public spaces.

Melehi’s visual language is immediately recognizable. Beginning in the mid-1960s, he developed the famous motif of stylized waves and flames, sinuous and repetitive forms that traverse the pictorial surface in a rhythmic and hypnotic manner. These seemingly abstract signs evoke natural and symbolic elements—the sea, energy, movement, light—and reference the Atlantic landscape of his hometown, as well as the decorative and ornamental traditions of the Arab-Islamic world. Intense and saturated color becomes the true protagonist of the work, capable of constructing a vibrant and dynamic visual space.

Alongside canvas painting, Melehi works on posters, murals, graphic design, and editorial projects. His participation in artistic initiatives in Casablanca’s public spaces in the late 1960s is emblematic, when works were exhibited directly in the squares and streets, a political and cultural gesture that broke with institutional conventions. For Melehi, art is not an isolated object, but a tool for communication, visual education, and identity affirmation.

Alongside his artistic practice, Melehi plays a key role as a cultural organizer. In 1978, he founded the Asilah Cultural Moussem, transforming his hometown into an international hub for artists, intellectuals, and writers. This project reinforced his vision of an open, participatory, and locally rooted art form, capable of generating dialogue between diverse cultures.

Mohamed Melehi’s works have been exhibited in numerous international exhibitions and are part of important public and private collections. His work has decisively contributed to redefining the image of contemporary Moroccan art on the global stage, demonstrating that abstraction can be a deeply situated language, charged with memory and meaning.
Mohamed Melehi passed away in 2020. His legacy is more relevant today than ever: through simple and powerful forms, he built a visual vocabulary capable of uniting modernity and tradition, local and universal, art and everyday life. His work continues to demonstrate how color and sign can become instruments of freedom, identity, and collective imagination.

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