User:Jacobertande/sandbox

Life and career[edit]
Ibrahim El-Salahi was born on 5 September 1930 in El-Abbasyia, a neighborhood of Omdurman, Sudan to a Muslim family and is arguably one of the most important and influential modern African artists. His father's career was running a Qur'anic school, which transpires to be the place where El-Salahi learned and practiced his calligraphy, which is predominant throughout his artwork. As a result of his lack of interest, his marks in school prevented him from pursuing medicine, which fortunately led to him beginning his art career. From 1949 to 1950 he studied Art at the School of Design of the Gordon Memorial College, currently the University of Khartoum. On the basis of a scholarship, he subsequently went to the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1954 to 1957. At the Slade School of Fine Art, El-Salahi was exposed to European schooling, modern circles, and various historical artists, which unintentionally altered the constructions of his artworks. Studying here also allowed him to take formal and ideological cues from modernist painting, which helped him learn to balance pure expression and gestural freedom. Additionally, in 1962, he received a UNESCO scholarship to study in the United States, from where he visited South America. From 1964 to 1965 he returned to the US with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1966 he led the Sudanese delegation during the first World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar, Senegal. In addition to representing Sudan in the First World Festival of Black Arts, El-Salahi also was also a part of the Sudanese delegation at the first Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers three years later in 1969. Both of the events were important and significant on modern African arts movements.

Following the completion of his education and training, he returned to Sudan. During the duration of his stay, he used, in his work, calligraphy and elements of the Islamic culture that played a role in his everyday life. Trying to connect to his heritage, El-Salahi began to fill his work with symbols and marking of small Arabic inscriptions. As he became more advanced with incorporating Arabic calligraphy into his work, the symbols began to produce animals, humans, and plant forms, providing more meaning to his artwork and allowing viewers to connect to his work. El-Salahi learned to combine the European styles with the traditional Sudanese themes in his art, which evokes a transnational African-influenced surrealism.

El-Salahi was assistant cultural attaché at the Sudanese Embassy in London from 1969 until 1972, when he returned to Sudan as Director of Culture under Gaafar Nimeiri's regime, then was Undersecretary in the Ministry of Culture and Information until September 1975 when he was imprisoned without charge for six months and eight days for being accused of participating in an anti-government coup.

At the time of Ibrahim El-Salahi's period of incarceration, many intellectuals and members of the Sudanese Communist Party were sent to prison during this time on the Sudanese political scene. El-Salahi's freedom was stripped in Kober Prison in Khartoum, prisoners were not allowed to write or draw, and if a prisoner was to be caught with paper or pencil they would be punished with solitary confinement for fifteen days. El-Salahi was able to find a pencil and would often use the brown paper bags that food was distributed with to draw on. El-Salahi would tear the bag into numerous pieces and would use the 25 exercise minutes he received everyday to sketch out ideas for huge paintings. He would secretly sketch and bury the small drawing into the sand to maintain his ideas. El-Salahi was released on 16 March 1976, and did not keep any of the drawings he made in prison, he left them all buried. El-Salahi rented a house in the Banat region of Omdurman for a short period of time. Two years after being released from prison he exiled himself from the country and for some years worked and lived in Doha, Qatar, before settling in Oxford, England.

Ibrahim El-Salahi holds a strong faith in Islam, particularly of the Khatmyia sufi sect. El-Salahi has been exposed to Islam, and at the age of two he entered Qur'anic school, where he learned to read and write. El-Salahi prays five times a day and he also prays before he works on his artwork. El-Salahi, like other Sufi's, views prayer as a way to establish a medium between the creator and the created. Prayer is crucial to El-Salahi's work, it is noted that his work does not originate with him, it passes through him to the canvas from an external source. El-Salahi, throughout many times in his long career, tried to maintain this link between Allah and his work.

Art[edit]
He is considered a pioneer in Sudanese art and was a member of the "Khartoum School" that was founded by Osman Waqialla. Founding members of the Khartoum School were colleagues of poets, novelists, and literary critics of the "Desert School", another group of contemporaries that sought to establish a true Sudanese identity. One of the main areas of focus for the Khartoum School was engineering an authentic Sudanese aesthetic through arts, and not relying heavily on Western influences. In the 1960's he was associated with the Mbari Club in Ibadan, Nigeria. In an interview with Sarah Dwider, a curator at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, El-Salahi was asked about his time spent in Nigeria and the impact it had on his work, and he replied: "My short visit to Nigeria in the early 1960's gave me the chance to connect artistically with a dynamic part of the African continent, opening myself to influence and be influenced."

He began by exploring Coptic manuscripts which led him to experiment with Arabic calligraphy. Ultimately, he developed his own style and was among the early group artists to elaborate the Arabic calligraphy in his paintings, in a style that became known as hurufiyya.

In an interview with the Guardian in 2013, he explained how he came to use calligraphy in his artworks. Following his return to Sudan in 1957, he was disappointed at the poor attendance at his exhibitions and reflected on how to generate public interest:


 * "I organised an exhibition in Khartoum of still-lifes, portraits and nudes. People came to the opening just for the soft drinks. After that, no one came. [It was] as though it hadn't happened. I was completely stuck for two years. I kept asking myself why people couldn't accept and enjoy what I had done. [After reflecting on what would allow his work to resonate with people], I started to write small Arabic inscriptions in the corners of my paintings, almost like postage stamps, and people started to come towards me. I spread the words over the canvas, and they came a bit closer. Then I began to break down the letters to find what gave them meaning, and a Pandora's box opened. Animal forms, human forms and plant forms began to emerge from these once-abstract symbols. That was when I really started working. Images just came, as though I was doing it with a spirit I didn't know I had."

His work has developed through several phases. His first period during the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's is dominated by elementary forms and lines. During the two decade span, El-Salahi used more subtle, earthy tones in his color palette. In Ibrahim El-Salahi's own words: "I limited my color scheme to somber tones, using black, white, burnt sienna, and yellow ocher, which resembled the colors of earth and skin color shades of people in our part of the Sudan. Technically it added depth to the picture". The color selection that El-Salahi chose in this formative period in his artistry was to reflect the landscape of Sudan, trying to attempt to connect larger concerns of society whilst creating a unique Sudanese aesthetic through his work. Then his work becomes rather meditative, abstract and organic, using new warm, brilliant colors and by abstracted human and non human figures rendered through geometric shapes. Most of his work has been characterized by lines, while he mainly uses white and black paint. In this regard, El-Salahi is seen as part of a broader Islamic art movement that emerged independently across North Africa in the 1950's and is known as the hurufiyah art movement. Hurufiyah refers to the attempt by artists to combine traditional art forms, notably calligraphy as a graphic element within a contemporary artwork. Hurufiyah artists rejected Western art concepts, and instead searched for a new visual languages that reflected their own culture and heritage. These artists successfully transformed calligraphy into a modern aesthetic, which was both contemporary and indigenous. In Sudan, where El-Salahi was based, artworks include both Islamic calligraphy and West African motifs, such as elongated mask shapes. Some of his works like, "Allah and the Wall of Confrontation" (1968) and "The Last Sound"(1964) are both works that show dominant Arabic like figures and characteristics, such as the theme of the crescent moon. In the late 1970's and early 1980's El-Salahi was living in self exile in Qatar, here he harnessed his focus on drawing in black and white. Many were unaware of his residence in Qatar, El-Salahi found this to be "relieving" and could use the time to become more experimental.

In 2001, Ibrahim El-Salahi was honored with a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands.

In the summer of 2013, a major retrospective show of El-Salahi's work was mounted at Tate Modern, London, running from 3 July to 22 September 2013, the Tate's first retrospective dedicated to an African artist.

In 2018, the Ashmolean Museum held the first solo exhibition of El-Salahi's work in Oxford. The exhibition allows the viewers to appreciate the early works from Ibrahim El-Salahi as well as some of his more recent works. The exhibition was made to benefit those new to El-Salahi's artwork, also those that were familiar with his work. The museum combined his works with ancient Sudanese objects from the museums main collection, the goal of this was to let viewers of this exhibit see the inspiration from traditional artworks. One of the key aspects that the exhibit conveyed was El-Salahi's use of the Haraz tree. The Haraz tree is a native acacia species found commonly in the Nile valley, the tree often symbolizes resilience in Sudan. El-Salahi created a series called "Tree", which consists of several works and is an important period in the artists career captured by the exhibition. As scholar Salah M. Hassan points out: "The Trees series has demonstrated not only El-Salahi’s ‘resilience and productivity’, it also reveals the artist’s ‘ability to reinvent himself while remaining on the forefront of exploration and creativity."