Mahjoubi Aherdane

Mahjoubi Aherdane was born in Oulmès, in the Middle Atlas, into an Amazigh family; most sources give 1921, one gives 1920. He trained as an officer, served as a caïd under the French protectorate, and then joined the struggle for independence, becoming one of the leaders of the resistance and the Liberation Army in the 1950s. In 1957, with Abdelkrim al-Khatib, he founded the Mouvement Populaire (one report says the party was legally recognised only in 1959), a party that spoke for rural and Amazigh Morocco, and he served as a minister, including of defence, under King Hassan II.

Painting was his other life, and he never stopped. One Moroccan profile describes him as a painter who also wrote several books, and says his political and artistic selves are hard to separate. His canvases are bright and dreamlike, full of figures, animals and signs, close to a flamboyant surrealism; they draw on Amazigh symbols and the landscapes of the Middle Atlas. He exhibited in Morocco and abroad, and the Belgian auction house Millon lists him among its artists. He also wrote poetry in French — while, he said, thinking it in Tamazight — and published memoirs.

Aherdane died in Oulmès on 15 November 2020, aged 99, and was buried in his native town.

How to look at an Aherdane: read the canvas as a map of belonging. The animals and signs are drawn from Amazigh symbols and the Middle Atlas where he grew up, and the dreamlike crowding of figures is more a story than a scene. That reading is this site's own.

Where to see the work

Finances News Hebdo's profile "Aherdane le peintre", TelQuel's obituary and Millon's artist page are the places to read about and see his painting; we have not confirmed a museum holding. See our lists of Moroccan painters and Moroccan artists, and the Casablanca School, which also turned Amazigh signs into modern art.