El Salahi’s body of work is not bound within one style nor is it constrained by the early parameters of Sudanese aesthetic practices. His paintings combine a critical understanding of western art principles with references to Sudanese and Islamic art forms; his trademark linear style remains a preeminent unifying device expressing the intuitive merging of Islamic spirituality with critical social consciousness. 

El Salahi pioneered the Khartoum School style of painting described by the artist as “the abstract symbolic representational potential of the Arabic letter, realized by distinct Sudanese handwriting and decorated by African ornamentations.” This approach of reconciling Modernism with Arab-African heritage illustrates African Modernism independent of Western inspiration.

A Visionary Modernist begins by featuring an important Khartoum School painting, entitled A Vision of the Tomb (1965), from the Museum for African Art’s collection. Also shown in the opening section are examples of El Salahi’s early work produced when he was a student at the Slade School (at the University College of London). The exhibition continues with paintings and drawings from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s made during the artist’s return to Sudan, his travels in New York, and his time spent working in London before living again in Sudan as the country’s Undersecretary for the Ministry of Culture from 1973–1976. Pieces conceived while the artist lived in exile in Qatar in the mid-1970s through his paintings from the 1980s and 1990s are seen in the exhibition’s third section.  

Works from the turn of the twenty-first century through the present, made during the artist’s relocation to Oxford, England, are featured in the final section, including El Salahi’s ongoing Tree Series inspired by the special Haraz tree that grows along the banks of the Nile. A stunning three-panel painting, One day I Happened to See a Ruler, commissioned by the Museum for African Art and produced in New York while El Salahi was artist-in-residence at Cornell University in 2008, is one of the exhibition’s highlights. The eloquent Tree Series paintings and vibrant new commission offer a contemplative finale to the retrospective of this influential artist’s career. 

Guest curated by Salah M. Hassan, Professor and Director of the Africana Studies and Research Center and Professor of African and African Diaspora Art History and Visual Culture at Cornell University.

An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, edited by Salah Hassan with contributions by Sarah Adams, Ibrahim El Salahi, Salah Hassan, Hassan Musa, and Chika Okeke.

For more information about this traveling exhibition, please contact rdennis@africanart.org.