Composition

Composition exemplifies Mohamed Melehi’s mature mastery of colour, geometry and movement. A sharp diagonal emerges from the upper edge of the canvas in green, enclosing the artist’s characteristic waves in tonal variations of yellow and beige. Softer geometric forms in red and orange converge towards the centre before giving way to a second arrangement of undulating forms in blue and grey. A distinctive line traverses much of the composition, introducing a structural division that establishes a dialogue between fluidity and order. Angular and organic forms are held in careful tension, while warm and cool tonalities counterbalance one another across the surface. The resulting composition is at once rigorously organised and animated by a continuous sense of movement, demonstrating Melehi’s ability to reconcile geometric precision with organic rhythm.

Melehi’s distinctive visual language emerged from a sustained engagement with the expressive and communicative potential of colour, shaped by both international modernism and the visual traditions of Morocco. Having witnessed the replacement of Spanish and German flags by American, British and French ones in Tangiers in 1945, he became acutely aware of colour as a visual language capable of carrying political and cultural meaning. This sensitivity was further developed during his years in New York, where the vivid colours of commercial advertising and the rhythms of jazz informed his encounter with abstraction. There, he embraced bright, industrial pigments and sharply defined contours, eliminating visible brushwork in favour of a precision that allowed colour and form to become autonomous elements of the composition. Upon returning to Morocco, these experiences entered into dialogue with the country’s traditional arts, crafts and architecture, particularly the geometric patterning of Amazigh textiles. Rather than reproducing these traditions directly, Melehi transformed their structures and rhythms through the language of abstraction, forging a distinctly Moroccan modernism.

In Composition, this synthesis is expressed through the interplay of geometric structures and flowing forms. The shapes interlock across the canvas, creating a complex visual rhythm in which curved and angular elements continually counter and complement one another. The ordered divisions and geometric configurations recall the mathematical structures of Islamic art, while the rhythmic repetition and patterning resonate with the visual language of Amazigh textiles. Melehi absorbed these diverse sources into an abstract vocabulary, deconstructing and reorganising inherited forms rather than treating them as fixed decorative motifs. In doing so, he created compositions in which cultural memory and modernist abstraction coexist, with order never static but continually animated by movement and variation.

At the centre of this visual language is the undulating wave motif that became synonymous with Melehi’s work. Its association with the electromagnetic waves used to transmit television signals introduces a distinctly technological dimension to the motif, while its undulating form also evokes the sea and horizon of Asilah, the northern Moroccan coastal town where Melehi was born and raised. At the same time, its rhythmic character recalls the visual languages of Islamic and Berber art, allowing the wave to move between technological, natural and cultural associations. Melehi transformed the phenomenon of the wave into a vital abstract sign, one capable of suggesting movement, continuity and energy. In Composition, it is fully integrated into a mature pictorial vocabulary, functioning simultaneously as pattern, movement and structural rhythm. Through this synthesis, Melehi brings seemingly disparate influences into equilibrium, creating a language in which modernism and tradition, structure and movement, and technological abstraction and cultural memory coexist.

Composition originates from the prestigious Dalloul Collection, Beirut, founded by Dr Ramzi and Saeda Al Husseini Dalloul and now led by their son, Dr Basel Dalloul. Spanning five decades, the collection reflects the artistic, political and cultural shifts of the Arab world and the family’s longstanding dedication to preserving and promoting Arab creativity.

Mohammed Melehi is regarded as one of the most important figures of the modern Moroccan art scene. Beyond painting, Melehi worked across photography, muralism, graphic design and education, and remained a committed cultural activist throughout his career, notably helping to organise the Asilah Cultural Moussem, an annual arts festival in his home town. Alongside Farid Belkahia and Mohammed Chabâa, he helped steer Moroccan art away from easel painting and the gallery system, advocating instead for public murals and integration into everyday life. His distinctive wave motif, developed from the mid-1960s onward, became one of the most recognisable visual signatures of postwar Arab abstraction.

His work is held in major international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Institut du monde arabe, Paris; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi; the Musée d'Art Contemporain Africain – Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; and the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation (DAF), Beirut. In 2017, he was honoured with a retrospective at Mathaf, and his work has since featured in major group exhibitions, including The Casablanca Art School, which travelled from Tate St Ives to the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2023–2024, and Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, held at the Barbican Centre, London, in 2026.