Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist

A retrospective at Tate Modern of work by Ibrahim El-Salahi, a leading artist of the modernist movement in Africa and the Arab world.

This artist was an excellent draftsman and I loved his early portraits and his work as a book illustrator but the bulk of the work was more abstract. I liked the idea that he incorporated Islamic script into his work as he had studied calligraphy but as I don’t know much about it it was hard to tell when it was being used so I could have liked a bit more commentary.

 A general gripe about this exhibition and the others I saw at Tate Modern on the same day was the fashion to put the descriptions at the end of run of pictures. It was good to be able to look at and compare the work unobstructed but it was hard to match the right description to the picture particularly with abstracts.

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