Untitled from The Group
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Sudanese, born 1930
2016
A small, spare etching in which El‑Salahi uses incised, calligraphic lines and symbolic forms—arches, a lattice tower, a spiral shell—to suggest a memory‑laden, hybrid landscape.
You notice first the delicate, scratchy marks and stippled shading that outline tiny architectural arches and a mastlike tower hovering above broad areas of quiet paper, giving the work an intimate, fragmentary quality.
Made late in his career, this print distills El‑Salahi’s blend of Islamic calligraphic gesture, African visual vocabulary, and modernist economy of line, advancing the Khartoum School’s project of a postcolonial modernism that makes personal and cultural memory visible through drawing and print.
Medium
One from a portfolio of twelve etchings
Dimensions
composition: 9 3/4 × 7 3/4" (24.7 × 19.7 cm); sheet: 13 3/8 × 11 1/4" (34 × 28.5 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Acquired through the generosity of the Contemporary Drawing and Print Associates
Accession
193.2018.10
Palette
Exhibitions
