Riad Kherdeen to present “Farid Belkahia in Prague” at the annual Association for Art History Conference at the University of Cambridge on April 9, 2026
Introduction
Assistant Professor Riad Kherdeen will be giving a paper titled "Farid Belkahia in Prague" at the annual Association for Art History Conference held at the University of Cambridge on April 9, 2026. He is on a panel called "Global Cold War: Eastern Bloc, Northern Africa, and West Asia," which is related to a forthcoming special issue of the Getty Research Journal that this work will be published in.
Paper abstract:
After completing his training at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1959, the Moroccan artist Farid Belkahia continued his studies and worked in Soviet Prague until he was recruited to become the director of the Casablanca École des Beaux-Arts in 1962. Why did Belkahia seek out Prague, and what was its impact on his art and politics? Whom did he meet there, and what did he produce while in Prague? What exactly did he study in Prague, and who did he study under? This paper seeks to shed light on Belkahia’s time in Prague by investigating the pedagogy of the Theatre Academy he studied at, exhibitions histories of contemporary art in Prague during this time, and the circles of artists and literary figures that Belkahia overlapped with. Ultimately, this paper highlights some of the ways in which Belkahia’s understudied Prague years had a lasting impact on both his political and artistic formation.