Fez — African Arty Gallery is dedicating its winter program to Karim Bennani, a painter and institutional builder whose work helped shape a confident Moroccan modernity.
The show brings together works from across seven decades.
It places early drawings and canvases in dialogue with later explorations of color and form to trace an evolving visual language rooted in precision, restraint, and spiritual inquiry.
A pillar of Moroccan modernity
Bennani emerged alongside peers such as Mohamed Melehi and Farid Belkahia at a moment when artists in Morocco were seeking a modern vocabulary on their own terms. He took part in building the country’s cultural ecosystem.
His role in co-founding the Moroccan Association of Plastic Arts (AMAP) positioned him not only as a studio artist but also as an organizer committed to professional structures for painters and sculptors.
The gallery notes Bennani’s consistent attention to line and proportion. Many works pursue a distilled geometry where contours carry as much feeling as color. Others focus on color itself through subtle modulations that suggest rhythm, breath, and inner light.
Across periods, the artist’s canvases balance international influences with Moroccan sources. The result is a body of work that feels both situated and universal.
Unseen works and fresh context
The retrospective’s core includes pieces that have not been exhibited publicly. Early works from the 1950s and 1960s show the rigor of Bennani’s draftsmanship and his interest in structure.
Later paintings expand the palette and explore a more meditative engagement with chromatic fields. The curatorial arc invites visitors to follow the continuity between drawing and color studies, and to read how those threads mature across time.
By partnering with the artist’s family, African Arty Gallery aims to preserve and share an archive that speaks to several generations of Moroccan artists and audiences. The collaboration will support conservation, research, and future loans. It also strengthens the gallery’s ongoing commitment to modernities born in Morocco and to the transmission of their foundations to younger viewers and practitioners.
A timely look at a foundational voice
For curators and collectors, the exhibition offers reference points that are useful for situating Moroccan art history in regional and international narratives. For the wider public, it provides a rare, concentrated encounter with a painter whose work privileges clarity and interior focus over spectacle.
The selection underscores how Bennani’s approach opened space for an autonomous and contemporary artistic thought in Morocco.
African Arty Gallery says the retrospective is designed as both homage and study. The aim is to give room to a corpus that rewards intentional viewing and to provide context that explains how an artist can help build institutions while maintaining a demanding studio practice. The show’s timeline and unpublished works help illuminate that dual contribution.
“Karim Bennani: Retrospective” opens on December 10 at African Arty Gallery. The exhibition brings to Casablanca a body of work that shaped the country’s artistic present and continues to inform its future.
