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By Paul Dunwell, writing for EasyFrame
© Copyright EasyFrame 2021
'The Inevitable' is a nine-part ink drawing. When Tate Modern mounted a retrospective of Ibrahim el-Salahi's work in 2013, its first devoted to an African modernist, it described his art as evidence of 'a new Sudanese visual vocabulary, which arose from his own pioneering integration of Islamic, African, Arab and Western artistic traditions'. Hyperbole apart, the story of how he came to make it is fascinating on a human level, because the dreadful circumstances in which he conceived the work explain both its subject and its style.
In 1975, at 45, he was jailed for just over six months by the military regime of Jaafar Muhammad an-Nimeiry. A trained artist, he whiled away what he knew might be his last hours by drawing in secret on scraps of the paper that cement came wrapped in, and burying the pieces in the sand outside his cell for fear of discovery. He never recovered them. Whenever the guards called his name it could mean solitary confinement, another jail, execution or freedom. In the end it was freedom, and since being caught with anything to write on could have meant severe punishment, he understandably felt it would be pushing his luck to ask to pop back to the yard and dig up his drawings.
'The Inevitable' was conceived during that imprisonment. It has been shown at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and compared with Picasso's work on several fronts (you'll probably see echoes of 'Guernica'). It has been described as 'cubo-expressionist', 'modernist', 'symbolist' and 'surrealist'.
El-Salahi left jail with more than a new determination to make work that stood for freedom. He also saw that the lattice-like structure he had been forced into, composing a bit at a time on small pieces, could be used on a much larger scale. 'The Inevitable' is 211.5 × 238.1 cm (83 1/4 × 93 3/4 inches): monumental, at over two metres square.
El-Salahi was born in Sudan in 1930, the son of the head of an Islamic school, and has been a public servant and diplomat as well as an artist. He trained in design at what was then the Gordon Memorial College in Sudan from 1949. He was in only its third intake, by which time it had taught just 24 students, which tells you how little artistic training there was. He learned to paint, draw, model in clay and bind books, and spent more time on calligraphy, in which he had been grounded at school.
From 1954 to 1957 he attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London, and took a course in Florence along the way. After graduating he taught for a while at the College of Fine and Applied Arts in Khartoum.
At the Slade he studied European art history from the Renaissance to the modern day. He has spoken of his interest in Giotto, the supposed 'father of the Italian Renaissance', and in Matthias Grünewald, the German painter who ignored Renaissance ideals. He has spoken too of African motifs, of Arabic calligraphy (the use of lettering in modern art is often called the 'Hurufiyya' movement) and of symbolic and decorative traditions. He was in touch with a Nigerian-based pan-African club for artists and writers. And he has said he was intrigued by Van Gogh's ability to conjure up art while in torment.
What about those similarities between 'The Inevitable' and 'Guernica'? Picasso painted the latter in 1937 for political reasons, to mark the bombing of a Basque town. El-Salahi was seven at the time, and he says he was not influenced by it. Picasso died in 1973, so he never saw 'The Inevitable'. We can probably conclude that the similarities are coincidental.
El-Salahi once said of the comparison: “It’s the rhythm of calligraphy and African motifs. This is what excited me and why I did that work. It might look to your eye like something related to Picasso. But I assure you it’s not. But it’s up to you if you see it. If you see it as something influenced by Picasso let it be because I present the work and my job is finished. When the work is finished you can interpret it the way you want. It’s a free world”.
Between 1969 and 1972 the artist worked at the Sudanese Embassy in London as assistant cultural attaché. He made little art then, and admits there have been long periods when other work came first, including helping to set up educational institutions in Sudan.
He was working for the Sudanese government on cultural projects when he was arrested in 1975 and held, without trial, in Cooper (Kober) Prison. It seems this was because a relative was accused of involvement in a plot against the regime. In later years, free and with no reason to lie, he has always said he was entirely innocent and knew nothing of it. Nimeiry was finally ousted in 1985.
The artist is pretty disparaging about the historic lack of interest in the arts in Sudan. He has told how, when he was trying to set up a Department of Culture, he asked for £20 to buy a bicycle and got a tenth of that: enough for a bicycle pump.
He has taken an active interest in democratic movements in the Middle East and North Africa, and in particular the 'Arab Spring' that began in 2010. Endearingly, he blamed a bad dose of flu for not joining the protests, though at 80 he could have been excused front-line service!
Since 1998 he has lived and worked in Oxford.
He speaks of each panel as something like a fractal: even on its own it represents the whole. He says he never knows, when he starts a piece, what it will turn into. He explains his ideas in terms of embryos that grow and particles that interact. And he mentions that it took him a decade to work 'The Inevitable' up into the piece he had conceived in prison.
He is quite disparaging about art appreciation and the labels stuck on him. He resents being tagged as a member of the 'Khartoum School', for instance, when he was involved with it only from 1959 to 1962, almost a footnote in a 70-year career. He once said: “I find that I’m a role model for something that I never asked for at all. I get people coming into the studio and writing papers and so on”.
He reserves his sharpest criticism for the Sudanese government's neglect of the arts. Even so, he feels there are more opportunities now for young people to train, especially as graphic artists heading for digital careers, that there are more galleries and exhibitions, and that the outside world has helped.
Asked whether art could change political or social structures, he answered: “I believe in the fact that the message from the artist to the public is to let them think and develop their own idea about the work”. So he is not preaching. 'The Inevitable' is not propaganda.
This is a powerful piece, a long-considered response to oppression and the abuse of human rights. Given the artist's comments it would be wrong to be too prescriptive about how to look at it. But that such art could be conceived in such circumstances is a triumph of the human spirit.
You can buy unframed prints of El-Salahi's work affordably, or shop for originals. He is also known for 'Reborn Sounds of Childhood Dreams I' and 'They Always Appear'. See www.artsy.net/artist/ibrahim-el-salahi.
You'll want to frame whatever you buy. Any good framers will show you a range of solutions and advise on what suits the work and where it will hang. You can contact EasyFrame on 01234 856 501 or at sales@EasyFrame.co.uk, and they'll always chat even if you don't want to buy!
Article Posted: 03/06/2021 10:54:38