Kept in the same family for over 80 years, L’Aouache à Télouet is the only modello known to date for the monumental work commissioned for Casablanca’s Hôtel de Ville, now held at the Musée du Patrimoine Immatériel Jamaâ El Fna in Marrakech. It illustrated the cover of the magazine l’Atlas in the spring 1937, and that of Le Maroc du Nord au Sud, in January 1938. Louis Delau, the magazine’s director, declared that Majorelle had succeeded in capturing “the soul of the country”.

It is in the lush setting of his garden, home to over 300 species of plants, that Jacques Majorelle installed his models from the 1930s onwards. A highlight of this series, Bijoux berbères, represents a woman kneeling under a night sky, her sole adornment Berber necklaces glistening in the moonlight. To enhance the glow of his model’s skin and jewelry, Jacques Majorelle applied gold and silver powder to his paper, a technique that would become emblematic of his work. Bijoux berbères was then reproduced in a special Christmas 1935 issue of L’Illustration and exhibited in the Jacques Majorelle retrospective at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nancy and at the Institut du Monde Arabe (1999-2000).

This chapter will be accompanied by additional works by classic Orientalists such as Ernst, Girardet, Lecomte du Nouy, Bridgman and Cruz Herrera.

This chapter will feature eight pieces by Mohamed Melehi created between 1964 and 2019, stemming from the artist’s legacy and private collections. Among this selection presented at auction, the acrylic on canvas Une Autre Nature (estimate €27,000 – 37,000), testifies the new-yorker phase of the artist between 1962 and 1964, while the emblematic painting Flamme (estimate €72,000 – 110,000) represents the early 1970s phase of the artist. A masterpiece of the 1980s, Pyramidal (estimé €90,000 – 140,000), composed of geometric motifs, undulating patterns and shades of colour, echoes the artist’s monumental urban frescoes in Asilah.

This chapter will also feature some of the leading figures in modern and contemporary Moroccan art, including Glaoui, Rabi’, Yacoubi, Essaydi, Chaibia and Idrissi.

Finally, the African contemporary art chapter will offer a major tapestry by Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté. Composition Massabelè is an assemblage made from strips of bazin, a traditional hand-dyed Malian textile, and embroideries. Abdoulaye Konaté began incorporating Moroccan fabrics into his creations in 2016, after completing a residency at the Fondation CDG in Rabat. A rare large-format photograph by Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso will also be on view. La femme américaine libérée des années 70 is part of the Tati series, created in 1997 for the 50th anniversary of the French clothing brand. This selection is accompanied by a canvas by Hilary Balu, a major work by Aboudia, and a group of six modern Congolese works by the leader of the Hangar School, Pilipili Mulongoy. 

Senegalese artists will be celebrated in this African Spirit 2024 edition. An emblematic self-portrait by photographer Omar Victor Diop, Allegoria 1, from the Allegoria series exhibited at Paris Photo in 2021, will be offered at auction. Through this series, Omar Victor Diop invites the public to reflect on ecological issues. He incorporates scans of Natural History textbooks and encyclopaedias into his photographs, creating colour-saturated digital collages that place nature at the centre of his work. Allegoria 1 is one of the most emblematic images in this series, and has been chosen to illustrate the cover of the artist’s monograph, published in 2021.

Amateurs and collectors will also be able to discover artists from the Modern Dakar School, such as Papa Ibra Tall, M’bor Faye as well as leading contemporary Senegalese artists Omar Ba and Soly Cisse.