Moroccan painter exhibits in Fez

The Batha Museum in Fez is hosting an exhibition of the Moroccan painter André El Baz's works.

El Baz's works are seen by art critics as precursors of contemporary Moroccan painting.

The exhibition at the Batha, which tackles a variety of different themes, is considered as one of his greatest displays in this decade.

The uniqueness of his works of art resides in his view of the world. To view his paintings is to feel his agony and concern over the most troubling aspects of the modern world. Indeed he has concentrated on tragic events such as the Holocaust (exhibited at Yad Vashem in 1985) and the Inquisition in 1992.

“My works are a personal reaction over war disasters, including Guernica (the Spanish town in the Basque region which was bombed in 1937 by German planes during the Spanish Civil War. The event inspired one of Picasso's most famous paintings as well) and Hiroshima (the Japanese city on which the United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare, on August 6, 1945),” said El Baz.


His paintings also react to the Chernobyl disaster, where the nuclear power plant underwent a meltdown in 1986. Forty thousand people were evacuated. Dozens of deaths and thousands of illnesses are reported to have been caused by the accident. He has also dealt with the genocide in Rwanda, where more than 500,000 ethnic Tutsis were masacred by rival Hutu militias in 1994.

Pointing out his incapability to control these conflicts tormenting people, El Baz underlined that he is merely a spectator who tries to convey what he sees through painting. One of his most famous paintings depicts cut-up bodies from massacres that are shown at lunch-time in TV. The gigantic paintings of André El Baz intensively express violence and parody.

He stresses that he firmly rejects the destructive nature of humans and points out that the role of artists is to raise awareness of the most important issues facing the world.

This is an exhibition very much worth visiting.

Source: MAP/Morocco Times/Art File.

Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news