Pivotal in his resistance of the East/West divide, Morrocan-born Mohamed Melehi fuses the traditions and craft of his home country with the Hard Edge movement of 1960s America. The present work was produced in the 1970s and results from the dialogue between American Minimalism, Moroccan tradition and popular crafts. For Melehi, the waves represent movement and change, their dynamic compositions continuously evolving, an apt symbol for Post-Independence Morocco, and ever-changing socio-politico and cultural landscape. In the present work, a variety of multicoloured waves undulate across the canvas atop a pink background. The painting radiates with the spirit of aesthetic revolution and the exhilaration of two worlds colliding.

Upon accepting a scholarship to study at Columbia University, Melehi moved to New York in 1962. The following years were formative for the young artist as he began to develop his own style and assert his artistic vision. His lines became smoother and his forms became clearer, largely informed by the Abstract Expressionists and Colour Field painters that had moulded the New York art scene of the preceding decades. The hard-edged blocks of colour introduced by Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland seeped into Melehi’s visual narrative; the artist had found the perfect style for his artistic dialogue between his native Morrocco and the NY Art scene. Similarly, a love of jazz flourished during his years in Manhattan. For Melehi, music inspired certain colour combinations and his brushstrokes evoked a sense of the rhythmic cadence.

Melehi was strongly informed by a desire to establish a form of modernism which did not attempt to replicate Western taste but rather one which would pay tribute to local culture and aesthetics. In the 1970s, Melehi started using car paint instead of acrylic: “I wanted to use materials that weren’t removed from the working classes… I started to use cellulose paint in solidarity” (Oliver Basciano, ‘Give us a swirl: How Mohamed Melehi became Morocco’s modernist master’, The Guardian, April 2019, online). During this t.mes , he also experimented with using natural materials as his canvas, such as wood. Melehi spent part of his career as an urban designer, working alongside architects and carving out many collaborations in the process. His vibrant palette and bold use of form seamlessly blend modernism with traditional consciousness, marking Melehi as an artist whose works still prove radical in the Contemporary Art canon.