L'empreinte du temps

So Art Gallery in Casablanca presents L'empreinte du temps, a retrospective of the Moroccan painter Abdellatif Lasri, from 12 November to 26 December 2026. The gallery dates the selection from 1983 to 2025. Most of the 52 listed works are acrylic or oil on canvas, joined by mixed-media canvases and smaller pieces in acrylic and oil on paper. Sizes run from works on paper of 24 by 30 cm to canvases of 150 by 200 cm and 50 by 215 cm.

Lasri was born in Casablanca in 1957 and settled in Paris in 1978. The gallery presents the show as his artistic return to the city of his birth. His first solo exhibition opened at the Maison du Maroc in Paris in 1983. In Paris he set up the Espace Lasri, where he offered space to fellow Moroccan artists. He also founded RISSANI, an association of Moroccan painters living in Europe, and serves as its president.

Paint is applied, pushed around and built up in layers with a palette knife, so each surface keeps a record of its own making. Colour is sometimes loud and contrasting, sometimes thinned until it turns transparent. In the gallery's reading, three motifs return across the decades. Faces are stripped back to a handful of lines. Grids and compartments stand for the order of modern life, which draws people together and also keeps them apart. Louvred shutters, made of stacked lines, point to what stays out of sight.

Among the titled works are La villa Gloriette (1992), an oil on canvas, and Ititry (2012), a 50 cm square acrylic. Five canvases from 2023 carry the title Ifitri; four of them add the name of a season in brackets. A group of 30 cm square canvases titled Assilah dates from 2025. Many of the other pieces are untitled. The gallery offers the show as a way to watch the painting change over four decades while certain forms hold steady.