About the artist
Born in Sudan in 1930, Ibrahim El-Salahi is one of the most important living African artists and a key figure in the development of African Modernism.
El-Salahi grew up in Omdurman, Sudan and studied at the Slade School in London. On his return to Sudan in 1957, he established a new visual vocabulary, which arose from his own pioneering integration of Sudanese, Islamic, African, Arab and Western artistic traditions.
Tate Modern’s 2013 retrospective of El-Salahi’s work was the Museum's first exhibition dedicated to Africa Modernism. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; The National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; The British Museum, London; Tate Modern, London; The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE; The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Newark Museum, Newark; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; The National Gallery, Berlin and many others.
selected works
Flamenco Dancers
Mosque
Fatima
They Always Appear
Untitled
They Always Appear
The Inevitable
Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams III
The Tree
The Tree
The Tree
Oxford Tree
The Tree
In the Present II
The Opening of Khartoum
Head II
Alphabet No.4
The Tree
Meditation Tree
Meditation Tree
forthcoming exhibitions
21 October 2019 – 1 November 2021
Ibrahim El-Salahi
War Within, War Without
MoMA Collection 1940s–1970s
The Museum of Modern Art
1 October – 22 October 2021
Ibrahim El-Salahi Lakwena Maciver Zak Ové
Black Bold British
Curated by Aindrea Emelife
22 October 2022 – 22 January 2023
Ibrahim El-Salahi
AFRICAN MODERNISM IN AMERICA, 1947-1967
Organized by the American Federation of Arts and Fisk University Galleries Curators: Perrin Lathrop, Nikoo Paydar, and Jamaal Sheats
15 September 2022 – 8 January 2023
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Transcontinental Modernism: Jacob Lawrence & The Artists of Black Orpheus
19 October 2021 – 24 April 2022
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Group Dynamics - Collectives of the Modernist Period
past exhibitions
9 September – 12 September 2021
Spiller + Cameron Salah Elmur Ibrahim El-Salahi Jordy Kerwick Lakwena Maciver Justin Williams Zak Ové
8 September – 11 September 2021
Spiller + Cameron Stephen Chambers Ibrahim El-Salahi Justin Williams Bram Bogart
Eye of the Collector
19 September 2020 – 18 March 2021
Ibrahim El-Salahi
UBUNTU
Five Rooms from the Harry David Collection - Featuring a work by Ibrahim El-Salahi
1 May 2020 – 1 February 2021
Johnny Abrahams Stephen Chambers Daniel Crews-Chubb Marcus Harvey Ibrahim El-Salahi Jamaal Peterman Duncan MacAskill Oliver Marsden Spiller + Cameron Bram Bogart
Vigo Virtual Reality Exhibition Gallery 1
4 December – 8 December 2019
Johnny Abrahams Kadar Brock Stephen Chambers Ibrahim El-Salahi Jamaal Peterman
Untitled Miami
3 October – 6 October 2019
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Seed Drawings - Pain Relief
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair
3 October – 6 October 2019
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Silkscreen paintings - Pain Relief
Saatchi Gallery | Salon
27 June – 3 July 2019
Johnny Abrahams Ibrahim El-Salahi Semiha Berksoy Bram Bogart Zak Ové Masaaki Yamada
Masterpiece
7 June – 11 August 2019
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Pain Relief
Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York's HQ, King's Rd, Chelsea, London SW3 4RY
4 May – 22 September 2019
Ibrahim El-Salahi
KUBATANA: An Exhibition with Contemporary African artists
Curated by Kristin Hjellegjerde
Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium
4 October – 7 October 2018
Leonardo Drew Ibrahim El-Salahi Hassan Hajjaj Chris Ofili Zak Ové
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair
Somerset House, London
28 September – 25 November 2018
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Forests and Spirits: Figurative art from the Khartoum School
Salon | Saatchi Gallery
19 September – 10 November 2018
Ibrahim El-Salahi
By His Will We Teach Birds How To Fly Ibrahim El-Salahi in Black and White
Curated by Salah Hassan and Toby Clarke
Vigo Gallery
20 June – 23 August 2018
Daniel Crews-Chubb Leonardo Drew Ibrahim El-Salahi Marcus Harvey Duncan MacAskill
Tree
Vigo Gallery
3 May – 6 May 2018
Derrick Adams Leonardo Drew Ibrahim El-Salahi
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair
Pioneer Works
23 November 2017 – 1 March 2018
Ibrahim El-Salahi
By His Will We Teach Birds How to Fly
Ibrahim El-Salahi in Black and White
19 November 2016 – 14 January 2017
Ibrahim El-Salahi
The Khartoum School
The Making of the Modern Art Movement in Sudan (1945 - present)
6 October – 9 October 2016
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair London
Ibrahim El-Salahi Zak Ové
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair London
28 June – 17 August 2016
Daniel Crews-Chubb Leonardo Drew Ibrahim El-Salahi Marcus Harvey Henry Krokatsis James Capper Keith Coventry Jason Martin
Continuum
Summer Show
Vigo Gallery
selected press/news
27 September 2019
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Artist Ibrahim El-Salahi: ‘When I work, I don’t feel pain at all’
Seed Drawings - Pain Relief
3 – 6 October 2019
23 October 2019
Ibrahim El-Salahi
MoMA Remixed: The Artists Coming to the Fore in the New Look Gallery
16 October 2019
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Budge up, great white males! MoMA goes global with an explosive $450m rehang
24 March 2019
Ibrahim El-Salahi
A slice of life in a Sudanese prison
On the recently issued reproduction of Ibrahim El-Salahi’s Prison Notebook
Ibrahim El-Salahi
SUITED Magazine: Bridging the Divide
Ibrahim El-Salahi finds the Commonality in Human Experiance, Laying it Bare in Black and White.
By Marianna Nannarone
0
8 May 2018
Ibrahim El-Salahi
The calligraphic lines of Ibrahim El-Salahi
A Sudanese Artist in Oxford
18 April – 2 September 2018
16 August 2017
Ibrahim El-Salahi
What’s the best work of art you saw this summer?
18 well-traveled experts weigh in
Ibrahim El-Salahi
The Museum of Modern Art is showing how artists can respond confidently to Trump
Washington Post
Ibrahim El-Salahi
at MoMA
MoMA Protests Trump Entry Ban by Rehanging Work by Artists from Muslim Nations
New York TImes
video
Ibrahim El-Salahi
BBC Radio 4: An Alternative History of Art
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, continues the BBC Radio series exploring overlooked artists from the 20th century. Art history has been written from a white, Western, male perspective. What would an alternative canon look like?
Ibrahim El-Salahi
'Mosque' 1964 @ Museum of Modern Art, New York
Mosque, 1964 on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017
