The Man Who Painted the Boulders

In 1984, a Belgian artist named Jean Vérame painted a cluster of enormous granite boulders in the desert outside Tafraout. He used 18 tonnes of paint. The rocks are blue.

Vérame had done this before — painting desert landscapes in the Sinai and the Tibesti mountains of Chad — and he would do it again. His practice was land art at continental scale: choosing a dramatic natural formation and covering it in industrial paint, transforming the landscape into something between a gallery installation and an act of geological graffiti.

The Tafraout rocks sit in the Ameln Valley, a stunning landscape of pink granite boulders set against the arid slopes of the Anti-Atlas. The boulders are naturally dramatic — house-sized, smooth, balanced on each other in formations that look impossible. Vérame painted a cluster of them in blue, red, and purple, using paint supplied by the French chemical company that sponsored the project.

The reaction was mixed. Environmentalists objected. Local residents were divided. The Moroccan government, which had given permission, did not revoke it. The art world debated whether painting a desert was an act of creation or vandalism.

Forty years later, the paint has faded. The blue is now a pale wash. The red and purple are almost gone. The desert is slowly reclaiming its own colour. Some visitors find the faded paint more beautiful than the original intervention — a collaboration between an artist and the sun, neither of whom planned the final result.

Tafraout itself is a beautiful Amazigh town in a valley of almond trees. The almond blossom in February draws visitors. The painted rocks draw the curious. The granite landscape draws everyone.