'From Time to Time': Drawings by Ibrahim El-Salahi Showing at Skoto Gallery

International Fri 08-04-2011

'From Time to Time': Drawings by Ibrahim El-Salahi Showing at Skoto Gallery
By a Correspondent

April 14th – May 21st, 2011

Skoto Gallery is proud to present From Time to Time, an exhibition of drawings by the Sudanese-born artist Ibrahim El Salahi. This will be his first solo exhibition at the gallery. The reception is on Thursday, April 14th, 6-8pm. The artist will be present.

^{The Inevitable by Ibrahim Mohammed El-Salahi}

Ibrahim El Salahi is a world-renowned artist and pioneer in African modern art whose work is embedded with a resonance of personal truth and an artistic vision that is firmly rooted in the fissure between the natural world and the world of imagination.

He draws on the rich literary and visual heritage of his homeland combined with a rigorous compositional organization that seek to balance spatial and structural concerns with an ability to reconcile intelligence and sensibility, knowledge and intuition as well as matter and spirit. The sensitive and exploratory lines in his work are highly characteristic and clearly recognizable, often using them as strokes in space to delineate, elaborate and circumscribe his images into endless organic forms.

He is aware of the creative process as a restless engagement with fleeting properties and strives to convey to the viewer the mental and physical engagement of the artist with his work. Closely viewed, his work evinces serene simplicity that is matured as thought and an invitation to contemplation.

Visual-Diary-in-Time-Waste-Palace-III

^{Visual Diary in Time Waste Palace-III | Pen and Ink on paper | 7.5 by 7.5 inches | 1996}

About the artist

Ibrahim El-Salahi was born 1930 in Omdurman, Sudan. After studying at the School of Design at Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum (1948-51), he worked as an art teacher at Wadi Seidna Secondary School near Omdurman.

In 1954 he was sent on a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art in London, and while in Europe he visited Florence to enhance his knowledge of Renaissance art. In 1957 he returned to Sudan and became head of the Painting Department at the College of Fine and Applied Art in Khartoum.

In 1962 he was sent by UNESCO on a tour to the USA, South America, Paris and London. After returning to Sudan, he searched for a Sudanese artistic identity by traveling throughout the country recording local architecture and designs used in the decoration of such items as utensils and prayer rugs. He also explored various manuscripts, trying to discover the arts of Africa and Sudan through them. During this same period he became fascinated by the ingenuity of Islamic art.

^{Visual Diary in Time Waste Palace-XLVIII | Pen and Ink on paper | 7.5 by 7.5 inches | 1997}

His previous knowledge of calligraphic forms, which he studied at the British Museum Library during his Slade years, led him to experiment with Arabic calligraphy which he saw as both a means of communication and a pure aesthetic form. In the 1950s he was one of the first Arab artists to include Arabic calligraphy and signs in his paintings.

After political imprisonment in his country in the mid-1970s, he lived in exile in Qatar, where he was an adviser to the government on communications, and in England. Working in all media, he defined his Arab-African heritage by synthesizing Arabic calligraphy with African forms.

His work is in numerous private and public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Neue National Galerie in Berlin, the National Gallery of Victoria in Sydney, the Newcastle Art Gallery in Australia; the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York, the Iwalewa-Haus in Bayreuth, Germany, Hampton University Art Museum, Virginia, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Awards include Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, 1964-65; Order of Knowledge, Arts and Letters, DR Sudan, 1975; Honorary Award, Prince Klaus Fund. 2001.

Recent exhibitions include The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-94, PS1, New York, 2002; Interventions: a dialogue between the modern and the contemporary, curated by Nada Shabout, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, 2010; The Future of Tradition – The Tradition of Future: Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art, Haus der Kunst, Berlin Germany. 2011. A major retrospective of his work, with art-historian Salah Hassan as guest curator is planned for 2012 at the Mueum for African Art, New York. He lives in Oxford, England.

For more information contact:

SKOTO GALLERY 529 West 20th Street, 5FL.
New York, NY 10011 212-352 8058
info@skotogallery.com

Posted By: Maggie Otieno

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