Ibrahim El-Salahi - Lena Fritsch

Ibrahim El-Salahi is a pioneer of African and Arab Modernism and one of the most influential figures in Sudanese art today. His paintings, drawings and book illustrations draw from a vivid imagination rooted in the traditions of his homeland, which he fuses with inventive forms of calligraphy, African abstraction and a profound knowledge of European art history. The story of the artist's life reads like a novel. Born in Omdurman, Sudan in 1930 to a family with a long history of Islamic scholarship, El-Salahi became fascinated with calligraphy as a child. After attending the School of Design at Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum, he received a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London between 1954 and 1957. Here he encountered European tradition, ranging from Giotto to Czanne to Mondrian, and contemporary art, as well as historic manuscripts in the British Museum. Returning to Khartoum, he began teaching at the Painting Department at the College of Fine and Applied Art and, together with fellow painters Ahmed M. Shibrain (b.1931) and Kamala Ibrahim Ishag (b.1939), became a key member of the renowned 'Khartoum School' which actively contributed to the growth of modern art in Africa.
El=Salahi established a new artistic vocabulary by uniting Islamic, African and European elements in a unique surreal style. From 1969 to 1972 he worked as Assistant Cultural Attach at the Sudanese Embassy in London, following which he returned to Khartoum as Director General of Culture and then Undersecretary at the Ministry of Culture and Information.