Untitled from Prison Notebook
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Sudanese, born 1930
1976
A page of ink-on-paper drawings from Ibrahim El‑Salahi’s Prison Notebook in which the artist conjures a surreal hybrid—part bird, part cloud with a masklike head—to probe imagination under confinement.
A heavy ink wash forms a hovering, cloudlike mass that bleeds into a finely hatched bird suspended by netlike lines, while a small, masklike head and looping Arabic script float above, giving the page a dreamlike, tense lyricism.
Made in a prison notebook, the drawing exemplifies El‑Salahi’s pioneering synthesis of African visual motifs, Arabic calligraphic rhythm and modernist abstraction, showing how personal and political constraint could open new expressive languages.
Medium
Ink on paper from a notebook with thirty-eight ink on paper drawings
Dimensions
11 1/8 × 6 3/4" (28.3 × 17.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Acquired through the generosity of Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin, Catie and Donald Marron, Alice and Tom Tisch (in honor of Christophe Cherix), Marnie Pillsbury and Committee on Drawings and Prints Fund
Accession
319.2017.3
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
