MARRAKESH - Morocco (part I)

I knew nothing but its name when I entered the gates of the Jardin de Majorelle in an early morning of the late December.

Winter in Marrakesh means cold downs, early sunsets and heavy snow on the close Atlas Mountains. The muezzin wakes up the town; his solemn prayers flutter over a sky that is never cloudy or rainy for long, over flat roofs in terracotta shades bristled with antennas and fluttering clothes. Trades, markets and traffic begin then in a crescendo. By the time tourists leave their elegant riyad, streets will be crowded with carts and buggies, drawn by donkeys driven by men muffled in sombre, pointed djellabah. White, old taxis miraculously avoid careful pedestrians, smoky motorbikes and rusty bicycles. Vegetables are on offer in scanty heaps on stalls or scattered on mats, scanned by still cats lurking in the shadow. Stray, lean dogs rove around butchers’ windows where bodies of male animals are exposed. Impassive glances cross coloured veils, big air-conditioning buses and pinkish dust. Habit breeds indifference: they never rise to sift the squared minaret of the Koutoubya Mosque, they never stop to turn back the world when its surface dazzled in full moon wrapped in ceramics and stuccos.

This is the life, the energy and the light that fascinated Monsieur Jacques Majorelle when he first visited this country in 1917.

Son of Monsieur Louis Majorelle, a famous French furniture-maker who was involved in the development of the Art Nouveau movement in France, he became a painter, after his first studies as architect and decorator. To complete his education, he travelled diffusely to Spain, Italy and Greece lingering in milder climates, kindling creative sparkles. In 1910 he left his native Nancy, France, the snowy, small north-eastern town where ‘700 left tidy squares with impressive golden railings plunged in a persistent scent of vanilla, for Cairo, Egypt. The simple life of ordinary people, who live in the outskirts of the town, as the majestic temples of the High-Egypt became his endless subjects for four years. Here, he experimented with colours and pictorial techniques, with the shape of people and places and with a relentless and untameable sun.

Then, the family friend and Resident-General of France in Morocco, General Lyautey invited him to Marrakesh. The dry, hot climate revealed itself excellent for his poor health and its light inspired and challenged this painter as many other European and American artists in that period. Trailed by ancient tales, shifting his horizons as he travelled southward in the African continent or he faced the Atlas Mountains with bearers carrying easel and trunks, he settled there.

A few years later, he acquired a plot of land outside the Walled Medina, in the Nouvelle Ville; he built a small house and a studio, and spent the rest of his life painting and creating this garden, open to public for the first time in 1947.

Colours, plants, water and animals feature Le Jardin de Majorelle today as when Monsieur Majorelle created it.

He defined himself a “gardenist”, colours were his language. In 1931 he painted the studio in a cobalt blue.

-to be continued

Photos:

Travel in a garden.
The painting: Le souk aux tapis à Marrakech, huile sur toile, M.B.A. de Nancy
Itineraires marocaines, Maurice Arame