El-Salahi, Ibrahim
Ibrahim El-Salahi is a pioneer of African and Arabic Modernism, and one of the most influential figures in Sudanese art today. His paintings and works on paper draw from his vivid imagination, rooted in the Islamic traditions of his homeland, which he fuses with a profound knowledge of European art history, African abstraction and forms of calligraphy.
El-Salahi’s series By His Will We Teach Birds How To Fly was completed in 1969, and combines several of the artist’s key motifs morphing the bird and the human figure. El-Salahi drew inspiration from a habit of his father’s. A devout Sufi, he would pray with one finger pointing in the air, recalling the beak of a bird prevalent in the artist’s dreams.
- Artwork Details: 38 x 56cm
- Edition:
- Material description: Pen, ink and wash on paper
- Credit line: © the artist
- Theme:
- Medium: Drawing
- Accession number: ACC45/2017