Untitled from Prison Notebook
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Sudanese, born 1930
1976
An ink-on-paper drawing from Ibrahim El-Salahi’s 1976 prison notebook in which the artist sketches a hybrid human–mechanical figure to record inner visions and assert creative agency while confined.
You’re struck by the spare, precise black contours—curving, schematic lines that turn limbs into tubes and faces into masklike emblems, floating against the quiet white of the open notebook page.
Part of a pivotal strand of modernism, this work blends African and Arab calligraphic traditions with European surrealist and schematic modes to create a new visual language of spiritual and political resistance in postcolonial art.
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
319.2017.35
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
