Fouad Bellamine  (Moroccan, 1950) 

Fouad Bellamine grew up in the medina of Fez, Morocco in a family of craftsmen and part-time painters. His father, a talented painter, spent weekends painting the countryside around Fez and encouraged his son to develop his painting skills. Unlike his father Fouad was inspired by the colour and light within the medina and its relationship with the distinctive architecture. His grandfather wove and died silk and Fouad became interested in the relationship between the colours and their permutations on the silk and other media.

In 1967 Fouad went to the Casablanca school of Applied Arts and pursued a career in painting. In 1972, at only twenty one, Fouad’s work is exhibited for the first time in Rabat, where his work demonstrates the first examples of his iconic abstract language. His first solo exhibition followed in 1980. But the most significant turning point in his artistic career came after 1982 when he was invited to the twelfth biennale of Paris for which he produced a huge eight metre installation. Shortly after the event Fouad was offered a bursary by the French government to study and paint in Paris. This geographical move was extremely important to the development of Fouad’s career and his artistic development. In France he lived as an artist resident studying history and theory of art at the University of Paris VIII, but also benefiting from exposure to the international art community. Between 1983 and 1989 he held numerous solo exhibitions throughout Morroco, France and Belgium but has also exhibited worldwide including Spain, Portugal, Finland, Egypt and in the US.

In 1989 Fouad returned to Morocco passionate to promote the development of the contemporary arts in his homeland, and in 1997 he helped invest and found a permanent collection of contemporary art at the children’s hospital in Rabat. This project was the first of its kind in Morocco. Fouad was concerned by the lack of cultural policy surrounding contemporary art and the lack of art spaces available for the exhibition of such work. His efforts at raising awareness have been matched by his concern that art in Morocco should be open to external influences and artists need to be part of an international community; ‘there is no Moroccan painting, only Moroccan painters.’ Fouad’s work can be found in the permanent collection at the Arab World Institute and the National Fund for contemporary art in Paris, as well as the Museum of Africa and The Kinda Foundation.

Fouad’s minimalist, abstract style has undertaken a gradual evolution since its development in his early teens, but his special relationship with light and its expression and manipulation on the canvas have remained omnipresent throughout his career. Many of his works also pursue the architectural forms of experiences within the medina of Fez; domed ceilings, whitewashed walls and adjacent skylines are abstracted by smears, drips and movement in the painted surface. The dynamic within his work lies in how the form or object of the picture effects the creation of light and shadow that is constantly reworked in Fouad’s painted surface.

During the 1970’s Fouad was one of a whole generation in Morocco, that were experimenting both practically and theoretically with painting techniques, and more specifically for Fouad, with different materials and mediums. Since then Fouad’s work has always exhibited an interest in the physicality of the canvas and a fascination with factors that affect the paint. Simple colouration attracts an analysis of brush stroke and texture. Between 1980 and 1990 this trend developed into an investigation of gesture and space through his work. His work became linked to the exhibition space, forcing a consideration of the gallery as receptacle or the canvas edges as boundaries.

In recent years Fouad has added an overtly metaphysical tone to his artwork by exhibiting his painting as an act of freedom and reification of self. In 2003 an exhibition organised by the Moroccan Ministry of culture displayed a polyptych by Fouad that was made up of nine pieces concerning his emotional response to the American invasion of Baghdad in April 2003. Fouad’s work continues to be an exploration of the gestural and luminosity in painting.