Ibrahim El-Salahi is a Sudanese artist, painter, and former politician and diplomat. He was born on 5 September 1930 in Omdurman, Sudan, to a Muslim family. He is one of the foremost visual artists of the Khartoum School, considered as part of African Modernism and the pan-Arabic Hurufiyya art movement, that combined traditional forms of Islamic calligraphy with contemporary artworks.

He studied in a Khalwa (a traditional Islamic school), then in primary and secondary schools, where he showed his talent and passion for art. He joined the School of Design of the Gordon Memorial College (now University of Khartoum) in 1949, where he met Ahmed Shibrain, who became his lifelong friend and collaborator. He graduated from the school in 1954, and received a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he was exposed to different artistic movements and styles.

He returned to Sudan in 1959, and became a lecturer at the School of Design, where he taught drawing, painting, and design. He also became the director of the National Council for Arts and Letters, and the head of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Khartoum. He founded the Khartoum School of Visual Art with Ahmed Shibrain in 1960, which was a group of Sudanese artists who combined traditional African and Islamic motifs with modern techniques and forms.

He also worked for governments in various capacities. He established the Sudanese Embassies first ever Department of Culture in London in 1962, and then worked for the Ministry of Information in Qatar from 1975 to 1985. In between these roles, he spent just over six months wrongly imprisoned without trial in Sudan in 1975. The hardship he endured there has informed much of his later work.

He participated in many national and international exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennale, the Cairo Biennale, the Dakar Biennale, and the Sharjah Biennial. He also represented Sudan in many cultural events and festivals, such as the Festival of African Art in Lagos, Nigeria, and the Festival of Arab Culture in Paris, France.

He received many awards and honors for his artistic achievements, such as the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands in 2001, the Order of Merit from Sudan in 2003, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Khartoum in 2013.

He was known for his mastery of Arabic calligraphy, which he used as a medium of expression and communication. He created his own style of calligraphy, which he called “El-Salahi Script”, which was inspired by theNubian script and the geometric patterns of Islamic art.

He currently lives and works in Oxford, England. He has a rich legacy of artistic works and contributions to Sudanese culture. One of his paintings, titled “The Inevitable”, was chosen by the Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro for the cover of his latest novel, “Klara and the Sun”.