Moulay Ahmed Drissi was a self-taught painter who used oil paints to depict stylized versions of daily life. Drissi was interested not in straightforward representations, but in showing his coherent worldview, using minimal details in his images of people and landscapes. In 1945 he met painters from Switzerland who encouraged his interests and, from 1948 to 1956, he traveled extensively throughout Europe. His first exhibition was in 1952 in Lausanne, and he exhibited for the first time in Morocco in 1957 in Marrakech. That same year, Drissi exhibited his work at the second Alexandria Biennale, and was part of the foundational early exhibitions of Moroccan modern art including the first Paris biennale (1959) and the “Deux milles ans d’art au Maro” (Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 1963) exhibition. In 1957, Drissi founded the short-lived gallery L’Oeil Noir. He was the focus of an early monograph (1960) in a short series of Moroccan painters organized by Gaston Diehl.