Abderrahmane Rahoule | Artist

Abderrahmane Rahoule- Untitled, 2025

Abderrahmane Rahoule was born in Casablanca in 1944. He began his artistic training in 1962 under Farid Belkahia at the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca, before continuing his studies in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Industriels et des Métiers d’Art, and then at the Académie Populaire des Arts. He also took ceramics courses in the Netherlands and faience courses in Czechoslovakia.
His first solo exhibition in 1967 in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, marked the beginning of a series of important events in his artistic career.
Rahoule plays a key role in the Casablanca artistic avant-garde, alongside emblematic figures such as Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Melehi, and Hossein Miloudi.
The life and work of Rahoule are deeply influenced by a constant quest for architectural forms and volumes from the emblematic neighborhood of Derb Sultan in Casablanca, a major source of inspiration for the artist. His works often reflect the unique structures and dynamics of Derb Sultan, capturing the essence of its architecture. This exploration of the architectural forms of his immediate environment allowed Rahoule to develop a distinctive style blending tradition and modernity, while paying homage to his cultural heritage. A multidisciplinary artist, Rahoule is one of the major figures in the visual arts in Morocco. An active member of the Casablanca Group, he witnessed the birth of contemporary Moroccan art in the 1960s.

Both painter and sculptor, Abderrahmane Rahoule creates often intertwined anthropomorphic forms. A seasoned ceramist, the artist has participated in many major events in Morocco and abroad. Over the years, Abderrahmane Rahoule’s professional career has been built around two complementary axes: that of a ceramist, painter, and sculptor, and that of a teacher at the School of Fine Arts in Casablanca. Rahoule works through fragmentation and juxtaposition, construction and superposition, without ever falling into excessive geometrism. Cones, rectangles, and spheres articulate with harmony.
While the forms are reduced to their most minimal expression, the color always remains vivid, projecting an expressionist light onto the canvas that captures and energizes the gaze. But there is nothing narrative in this painting: it seeks neither to preserve nor to illustrate. He paints forms that seem to burst from the canvas, imposing relief and irregular surfaces, like trompe-l’oeil. The artist’s past as a sculptor explains his attraction to volumes.