Northern Africa

Art from North Africa, from Saharan rock art and Nubian pyramids to Islamic architecture, Amazigh craft and the Casablanca and Khartoum schools.

No works indexed yet · 10 related artists

No open-access works for Northern Africa are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.

About

Painted and engraved rock shelters at Tassili n'Ajjer in the Algerian Sahara record cattle herders and wildlife from a time when the desert was green. Along the Nile in Sudan, the Kushite kings of Meroë built steep pyramids. Islamic dynasties left the Great Mosque of Kairouan and Marrakech's Koutoubia minaret, and Moroccan craftsmen still set glazed zellij tile in dense geometric patterns. Amazigh (Berber) communities make silver jewellery, woven carpets and painted pottery with signs shared with tattooing.

Modernism took strong local forms. In Morocco in the 1960s, the Casablanca School around Farid Belkahia and Mohamed Melehi rejected easel painting for copper, leather and henna, while Jilali Gharbaoui painted gestural abstraction. In Sudan, Ibrahim El-Salahi and Ahmed Shibrain drew on Arabic calligraphy and African forms in what became known as the Khartoum School. In Algeria, Mohammed Issiakhem painted the wounds of war and independence.