Lacquer on board
“Hard-edge painting made me rediscover the abstraction inherent in Islamic art,” Melehi once said. After living in New York in the early 1960s, where he met artists like Frank Stella, Melehi returned to Morocco. Once in his home country, Melehi devised his signature wave motif to reference Moroccan crafts and architectural traditions while keeping the crisp geometries of hard-edge painting. Seduction blends everyday forms with commercial materials; its glossy surface comes from the artist applying industrial paint with a spray gun.
415: Hard Edges, Expanded Fields, 2026
Explore more
Hard Edges, Expanded Fields
Gallery 415Sharp lines. Flat shapes. Vibrant colors. In the 1960s, artists paired these qualities in unexpected combinations to find new directions for abstraction.
Learn more →
From MoMA Design Store
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.