Mohamed Hamidi

Biography

In 1969 an exhibition was held on Jemaa el-Fna square in Marrakech, amid the noise of the market, which has since come to be called a manifesto. Among the participants was Mohamed Hamidi, alongside Mohamed Ataallah, Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Chebaa and Mohamed Melehi. They were teachers and graduates of the Casablanca school, looking for a way to take Moroccan painting out into the street, to a viewer who does not go to galleries.

Hamidi was born on 7 August 1941 in Casablanca. Morocco was then a French protectorate.

He was among the first Moroccans of the post-colonial era to become students at the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca. In 1959 he went to Paris to add to his education: he spent long hours in museums and galleries and looked in on studios and exhibitions. He then enrolled at the School of Applied Arts in Paris, but left it after two years of study. In 1962 he entered the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, and in 1964 he received a diploma to teach monumental art, that is, murals and other work for public buildings. At the same school he became assistant to the painter Jean Aujame in his fresco studio. From 1967 to 1975 Hamidi taught at the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca, in the very circle that is regarded as one of the most influential in Moroccan visual art and in debates over the country’s modern and contemporary art. I think it is hard to judge his own part in those debates: the sources available give no detailed descriptions of his works. He was one of the founders of the Association marocaine des arts plastiques, the Moroccan association of visual artists. He began exhibiting as early as 1958, a year before leaving for Paris, and from then on took part in solo and group exhibitions in Morocco and abroad. He divided his time between Azemmour and Casablanca and often stayed in Grasse, in France.

Hamidi died on 6 October 2025, aged 84.