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.
Ibrahim El-Salahi finds the Commonality in Human Experiance, Laying it Bare in Black and White.
By Marianna Nannarone
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?
Mosque, 1964 on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2017