Pioneering modernist painter Ibrahim-El-Salahi was born in Omdurman, Sudan in 1930. On graduating from the School of Design at Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum, El-Salahi won a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Returning to Sudan in 1957 and subsequently moving to Doha, Qatar, he eventually immigrated to England in 1998, settling in Oxford where he continues to live and work. A retrospective was held at Tate in 2013, the first exhibition there dedicated to an African artist.
Pioneering modernist painter Ibrahim El-Salahi was born on 5 September 1930 in El-Abbasyia, Omdurman, Sudan, then co-administered by Egypt and the UK. In 1949, having not achieved the grades required to enter medical school, El-Salahi enrolled at the School of Design at Gordon Memorial College, Khartoum (now University of Khartoum). He had developed an early interest in calligraphy, watching his father, an Islamic scholar and transcriber of the Qur'an, draw 'interlacing geometric forms of scripture in an Africanised arabesque style' (Sotheby's). Upon graduating he won a scholarship to continue his studies at the Slade School of Fine Art in London (1954–57).
When he arrived, El-Salahi had already learnt to paint in a naturalistic style and demonstrated a skilful command of oil painting techniques, despite still searching for his own ‘formal style’ and ‘thematic focus’ (Okeke-Agulu 2012, p. 35). At the Slade he studied traditional European techniques and realist painting, discovering, among others, the work of Cézanne and Giotto. He then made a shift in his final year, focusing on ideas of two-dimensional representation and abstraction, partly inspired by studies of manuscripts in the British Museum, where he spent ‘a lot of time looking at old manuscripts [...]. I was interested in the origin of the written letters, their background and structure and meaning. I even studied ancient hieroglyphics’ (Ibrahim El-Salahi Interviewed by Ulli Beier, p. 106). This shift in style was exemplified by Untitled 1957 (private collection), an abstracted, elongated face reminiscent of African masks, whose two-dimensionality suggested calligraphic influences; its bold colours and dynamic brush strokes also recalled Expressionist or Neo-Expressionist portraits (Fritsch 2018, p. 13). El-Salahi later recalled that when he conceived the work: ‘I was thinking about my personal identity and how I see things […] I wanted a sense of the two-dimensional. I think this face was supposed to be my long face’ (In Conversation with Ibrahim El-Salah, p. 50).
El-Salahi returned to Khartoum in 1957, finding his newly independent home country in the midst of the First Sudanese Civil War (1955–72). He discovered, too, that his paintings, influenced by Western modernism, did not resonate with native audiences. As he later reflected, 'I came to see that […] if I was to have a relationship with an audience, I had to examine the Sudanese environment […] assess its potential as an artistic resource, and explore its possibilities as a complementary element in artistic creation' (Hassan 2013, p. 84). El-Salahi began subsequently to incorporate aspects of traditional Sudanese decorative design, folk art and Arabic script into his work. His colour palette also changed, reflecting the local landscape. While teaching at Khartoum's College of Fine and Applied Arts, El-Salahi co-founded the Khartoum School together with fellow painters Ahmed Shibrain (1931-2017) and Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq (b. 1939). Their style, known as thehurufiyya art movement, explored the symbolic and formal potential of the Arabic letter. By synthesising elements of Western modernism with Sudanese culture, El-Salahi and his peers propelled the development of modernism in Sudan and, subsequently, across Africa and the Arab world (Sotheby's). El-Salahi played an important role in formulating a broader African aesthetic, engaging with the Mbari Artists and Writers Club in Ibadan, Nigeria and participating in the First World Festival of Black Arts in Senegal in 1966 and the Second World African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos in 1977 (Tate).
From 1969 until 1972, El-Salahi served as Assistant Cultural Attaché at the Sudanese Embassy in London before returning to Sudan as Director General of Culture and subsequently as Undersecretary at the Ministry of Culture and Information until 1975. Later that same year he was imprisoned for six months without trial at Kober prison in Khartoum, accused of participating in a failed anti-government coup. While in confinement, El-Salahi drew on small scraps of fabric which he kept concealed in the sand floor of his prison cell. These subsequently formed the basis of the Prison Notebook, made 'to take away the bitterness and humiliation of being incarcerated for something I hadn't done' (Jaggi 2019). Two years after his release from prison El-Salahi moved to Doha, Qatar, before immigrating to England in 1998 and settling in Oxford. A retrospective of El-Salahi's work was held at Tate in 2013, the first exhibition at the institution dedicated to an African artist. It proved pivotal, marking the belated recognition by the Western art establishment of his crucial contribution to the development of twentieth-century transnational modernism. In 2018, Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Sudanese Artist in Oxford was held at the Ashmolean Museum. In 2001, El-Salahi El-Salahi became a British citizen and a Member of the Board of Directors of the Forum for African Arts. El-Salahi's work is represented in numerous UK public collections including the Ashmolean Museum, British Museum and Tate. Ibrahim El-Salahi continues to live and work in Oxford, England.