Fez — The Casablanca gallery L’Atelier 21 is presenting “L’enfance de l’art” (“The Infancy of Art”) from December 9, 2025 to January 10, 2026, marking the first solo exhibition by Abdelkrim Ouazzani in this space.
The show brings together recent works by the Tetouan-born artist, a key figure of Moroccan contemporary art, around the idea of childhood as a creative state.
A title that points to play
The exhibition title refers to a search for spontaneity and joy at the heart of creation. It echoes the way artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Klee, and Joan Miró approached drawing and color — with an eye trained by experience, but a gesture that remains playful and open.
With “L’enfance de l’art,” Ouazzani leans into that spirit. Forms appear to bend, collide, and rebuild themselves. Figures seem closer to dreams than to academic models. The works suggest an art that accepts accident, surprise, and a certain sense of mischief as part of the process.
A poetics of matter
To accompany the exhibition, L’Atelier 21 is publishing a monograph titled “Une poétique de la matière,” with a text by art historian Mohamed Métalsi. He describes Ouazzani’s practice as a place where iron, rust, and pigments speak to one another, and where forms are always in motion.
Rather than presenting clean, fixed shapes, the artist assembles elements that look like creatures, fragments, and hybrids. Some seem to dance or shift across the surface. Color does not simply fill space. It adds to the feeling that the works are alive, unstable, and open to interpretation.
Métalsi links this approach to the idea of the “eternal child” in Nietzsche’s writing: a figure that refuses rigid rules and finds freedom through play. By pushing away academic codes and embracing controlled spontaneity, Ouazzani positions himself close to that image of the creator who never stops experimenting.
From Tetouan to major collections
Born in Tetouan, Abdelkrim Ouazzani studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in his hometown, then continued his training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He later returned to Tetouan to direct the Institut National des Beaux-Arts, where he helped shape several generations of Moroccan artists.
Over the decades, his work has become part of major public and private collections. His pieces are held by the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the Fondation Alliances, the Ministry of Culture, the Fondation Al Mada, Saham Bank, Bank Al-Maghrib, and other institutions.
A childlike freedom with adult precision
In “L’enfance de l’art,” that long path shows up in the balance between freedom and control. The surfaces feel spontaneous, yet the compositions hold together with a clear sense of structure. Materials like metal and pigment carry the trace of time, while the shapes built from them remain light, strange, and sometimes humorous.
For visitors to L’Atelier 21, the exhibition offers a chance to see how one of Morocco’s most established artists returns to a simple idea: that art can keep a childlike energy, even after a lifetime of work.
