Available works · 1
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Sudan, b. 1930
A foundational figure in African modernism, El-Salahi brings Sudanese visual traditions, Arabic calligraphy and modernist experimentation into a distinctive language. His 2013 Tate Modern retrospective was the museum’s first devoted to an African modernist, and his work has since entered the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Tate, which acquired thirty-one works in February 2026. His gallery reports that some 340 of his works have been sold to museums during the thirteen years of its representation, and a survey exhibition is confirmed at MASP in São Paulo in 2028 with Adriano Pedrosa.
The painting offered here is an early pre-pixel work made at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1957, and the largest painting from that group still available. The series stayed with the artist’s family until this year and has never been shown publicly before.
About this work
The pre-pixel paintings, made at the Slade in the 1950s, are identifiable by their pixelated surfaces. Six were in his gallery’s most recent presentation; one of these, of the same size as this work, was shown at Frieze Masters and has since been sold into a private collection. Two further paintings from the period were sold previously, one to a collector in the Middle East and one to a collection in the UK. Apart from the smaller Church on the Hill, shown in the 2013 Tate Modern retrospective, none had been exhibited publicly.
Separately, El-Salahi revisited the series once, subtly, in 2002; that painting is now in a private collection.
According to his gallery, which is his sole representative, this is the largest remaining painting by the artist not in private or institutional hands.
Prices and availability on request.
Untitled, 1957
Oil on masonite
91 × 122 cm