Lot 53

Salah Elmur (Sudanese, born 1966)
Untitled I and Untitled II, 2000
Signed ‘S.ALMUR.2000’ and ‘S.ALMUR 2000’ (lower left)
Mixed media on found paper
16.5 x 11 cm (both)
KES 150,000 – 300,000
(US$) 1,200 – 2,400
Provenance: Private collection

Salah Elmur is a contemporary Sudanese painter, graphic designer, author, and filmmaker. He is currently based in Cairo, Egypt. Elmur studied Graphic Design at the College of Fine and Applied Art at Sudan University, Khartoum. Elmur’s artwork is composed of a fertile visual vocabulary that draws on scenes, situations and impressions recalled from his life, reaching back to childhood. Inspired by the many photographs he collected from his family’s photography studio, Elmur’s compositions emulate formal portraits, with additional elements that complement but also unsettle the mood of his paintings. Plants and animals share the frame with human subjects, limbs are shortened, and proportions are distorted, altering the relationships between various objects and figures. These elements are combined in a somewhat surrealistic swirl of memory, and the resulting paintings are tender, intimate vignettes.

With a career spanning three decades, Elmur has exhibited in participated in group and solo shows in East Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and America. Elmur is also an acclaimed illustrator and filmmaker, having composed and illustrated numerous children’s books, and directed six short documentaries and fantasy films which have been shown at international film festivals. In 2018, Elmur was the subject of a major retrospective at the Sharjah Art Museum in the United Arab Emirates, called Fragrances of the Forest and Photos. This was followed the same year by Forests and Spirits at the Saatchi Gallery, London, showing alongside two luminaries of Sudanese modernism, Kamala Ishaaq, and Ibrahim El Salahi. Elmur’s artwork is collected widely and is included in the permanent collection of prestigious institutions including MOMA, New York; Pompidou Centre, Paris; MACAAL, Marrakech; The Sharjah Art Museum and the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates.

These small works by the artist were made when he lived in Kenya in the 1990s and anticipate Elmur’s later paintings.