DUBAI: Morocco’s Loft Art Gallery will make its debut at Art Basel Paris from Oct. 18-20, becoming the first Moroccan gallery to take part in the prominent fair.

Yasmine Berrada, co-founder of the gallery, spoke to Arab News ahead of the fair, calling the opportunity a “real milestone.”

She said: “We have been working towards this for years. Since we started, we wanted to exhibit internationally.

“We want to travel with our artists, to collaborate with museums, with institutions, and so on.

“The gallery now has a certain standing and is exhibiting alongside galleries considered to the biggest worldwide,” she added.

The gallery will showcase seven works by renowned Moroccan modernist and Casablanca Art School founder Mohamed Melehi (1936–2020), including three pieces that have never been exhibited before.

“We are participating with works from the famous artist Melehi, with whom we worked for 12 or 13 years until he passed. For us, it is a celebration of this great collaboration, all the success we achieved with him, and everything we accomplished together as an artist and gallery,” the gallerist said.

Melehi’s radical geometric experiments and his iconic wave motif were pivotal in shaping the aesthetic of post-independence Morocco.

The artist, who was born in the port town of Asilah before he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Tetouan, spread his wings in New York before returning to Morocco in the 1960s.

The gallery’s presentation of Melehi’s works taps into a growing global fascination with Moroccan art, with notable figures like pop artist Hassan Hajjaj being commissioned by the likes of Vogue US and The Royal Commission for AlUla in Saudi Arabia.

Berrada also highlighted the increasing interest in Moroccan art, saying: “I can see it when we exhibit outside Morocco, like in France or London. People also often say, ‘Oh, we’re coming to Marrakesh next year or next month, and we want to visit your gallery’.”