Malika Agueznay, Born in 1938, Marrakech, Lives and works in Casablanca. Malika Agueznay is a pioneering artist in many ways. The first woman to develop abstraction, she took part in Moroccan modernity and contributed, alongside the tenors of the Casablanca School, to defining its codes and forms. In 1966, after initial scientific training, Malika Agueznay enrolled at the Casablanca School of Fine Arts, then directed by Farid Belkahia. There, she rubbed shoulders with the thinkers of Moroccan modernity and contributed with them to inscribing art in the political and social fields that would define the movement. Together, they questioned contemporary painting and focused their work on the study of forms, lines, geometry and pure colour. In contact with them, the artist develops her own research which she will explore throughout her life through different media. It was through her experience of engraving, which she discovered in 1978 at the Moussem of Asilah, that Malika’s work gained strength and freed herself from preoccupation with the legibility of form and content. As her friend the anthropologist Bert Flint points out, Malika Agueznay is, without doubt, the Moroccan artist of her generation who has pushed research in this field the furthest. To deepen her technique, the artist, who is also a young mother, does not hesitate to go to New York, to the studios of renowned engravers such as Mohamad Omar Khalil, Krishna Ready and Robert Blackburn. She will complete this apprenticeship in Paris at Atelier 17. Since then, faithful to the teachings of the Casablanca School, the artist returns to Asilah every year to lead the engraving workshop on the occasion of the Moussen (International Art Festival).
