Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Sudanese Artist in Oxford

Ibrahim El-Salahi (b.1930 in Omdurman, Sudan) is a pioneer of African and Arab Modernism and one of the most influential figures in Sudanese art today. His paintings, drawings and book illustrations draw from a vivid imagination rooted in the traditions of his homeland, which he fuses with inventive forms of calligraphy, African abstraction and a profound knowledge of European art history. His work is held in international museum collections including MoMA, New York, the Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi and Tate Modern, London. This lively and accessible book accompanies the first solo exhibition of El-Salahi's work in Oxford, the city which has been his home for the past twenty years. The exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum offers a new perspective on the artist's work, setting it into dialogue with objects from the Museum's ancient Sudanese collection. This catalogue explores the story of El-Salahi's artistic evolution, from his early abstracted works on paper, through his extraordinary multi-panel paintings, to the emergence of his mature, meditative drawings on medicine packets and small envelopes. It also includes an exclusive interview with the artist and an illustrated chronology. Lena Fritsch is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.