Sudanese Art Linking
Tradition and Modern Practice
Ancient Sudanese art civilizations have continued to develop to the present day. Nubian art continued to evolve in the Middle Ages in northern Sudan and supplied arts through many local traditions of painting and sculpture on outside walls while women painted on the inside walls.
Reflection (2014)
by Amna Marghani Mustafa
Birds on the Nile (2014) by Ashraf Moneim Mohamed
Besides the arts of this region there were also the arts of the eastern Sudan areas, which came into contact with the decorative Arabian arts, and the Islamic art areas of western Sudan associated with African art with its detailed lines (continual wavy horizontal lines, arches and sharp angles), along with Islamic themes. These components coexisted in this region and did not contradict the tendency embodied in the art of drawing and painting of the Nubians in South Kordofan of drawing humans and animals.
A Woman and her Baby (2014)
by Eldaw Hassan Bakheet
The depiction of organisms was inherited from the ancient Nubian arts that reflect the agricultural environment in which the Nile and animals played such a central role. It is the continuation of the ancient tradition of visual art in these areas of the White and Blue Nile that generated the special features of the local contributions in drawing, painting and art that preceded the academic institution linked to the official tradition.
Movement of Season (2014) by Hiba Ismail Awad Ismail
In addition to these local traditions which were around in the Middle Ages of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and West Africa, modern Sufi elders have admitted the significant role of the aesthetic functions of religious education arising from the importance of the science of language, literature and the craft of calligraphy and reproduction of manuscripts and book decorating. The craft of calligraphy has evolved in the modern era in various parts of Sudan with the writing of manuscripts and the decorative arts together with painting.
Identity Card (2014) by Mohamed Abdalla Otaybi
The emergence of the modern art of drawing and painting in Sudan
At the beginning of the twentieth century and the founding of the city of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, modern European- run shops began to appear. These had framed paintings copied from the original works and there were decorated cafés and nightclubs that belonged to communities that had lived in the city for a long time, such as the British, Armenians and Greeks, Indians and Copts.
Untitled (2014)
by Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed
With the advent of painting in the city of Khartoum, painting appeared in the nearby city of Omdurman, as part of the life of the modern city that had grown up with its salons and Sudanese Arab families.
Bride (2014)
by Mohammed Awad Mahmoud
However, the first quarter of the twentieth century saw the emergence of Sudanese artists in the public areas, who were becoming more important than the scenic artists of painted Sudanese café entrances, and spread to advertising and product packaging. And printing presses, and illustrated books and magazines, were increasing all the time.
Weaving Artwork (2014) by Mohyeldin Mohammed Ahmed
Local contributions and the official contribution of the Educational Institute
In the 30s the Division of Arts Education was founded at the Institute of Bakht Alrida, which belonged to the Ministry of Education, with the purpose of training teachers in art education for Primary schools. Jean-Pierre Greenlaw was the person who presented and supervised his British syllabus, and who also employed two Sudanese artists who had been engaged in the arts before they met him: Abdul Kader Talodi and Abdul Aziz Atabani. The division was developed to be able to train art teachers to be professionals in art education.
Untitled (2014) by Moniem Hamza
In the 50s, with the development of the national liberation movements in the Third World, there emerged concerns among Sudanese artists that they should link academic modern art with the tradition of art and local design, so the artists made visits to European, African and Asian countries and met artists from different places. They developed new art traditions, the most important in the direction which the critic Dennis Williams called the ‘School of Khartoum’, whose most prominent patrons were Ibrahim Elsulhi, Mohamed Ahmed Shibren and Osman Waqee Allah.
Untitled (2014)
by Rafat Omar Ibrahim
The School in fact did not offer theoretical data, and its founders did not gather data on the philosophy of a way of expression in a certain style, but considered the importance of the absorption of the African heritage and experience in the Muslim artist.
The Beauty of African Women (2014) by Roaa Kamal Osman
In the 70s emerged two trends: ‘Crystal School’ and ‘trend aesthetics’. While the first called for the work of art to open to shifts in various intellectual positions and not to be closed on the painting easel, linking the work of art to other areas of experience and provoking philosophical questioning, ‘trend aesthetics’ meant considering the work of art away from semantics and dealing with it as complex visual materials characterized by interdependence and modernity.
Women in War (2014)
by Samah Essam Eldin
The most prominent pioneers of the ‘Crystal School’ trend were Mohamed Hamed Shaddad and Nayla Altyb, and representatives of the aesthetic direction Abdalh Bashir and Hassan Mohamed Musa.
Untitled (2014) by Telal Osman El Habeeb
In the 80s new experimental trends emerged in a number of young artists who were not interested in expressing any particular intellectual position, but were trying, led by Salah Ibrahim Seif al-Din and Salah Allaute and Salh Almur, to investigate the relationship between the art of painting and narrative art, or between art, photography and the cinema arts, such as in the works of Hassan Ali Ahmed and Essam Abdel- Hafiz, who benefited from the experience of Hussein Sharif.
Anticipation (2014)
by Wala Mahgoub Ibrahim Hassan
In the field of sculpture there is Abdul Alhman Abdullah (Shangl) who uses various materials such as wood and stone and fibre for his sculptures of the human body and face.
Among the young Sudanese artists there is Mutaz Eleman, and Susan Ibrahim, while among sculptors there is Omaima Abdul Rasul, Amani Mohammed Hassan, and many others.
African Woman (2014) by Walaa Mohamed Ahmed Al Rayah
Briefly, in Sudan the visual art scene is characterized by diversity and richness and multiplicity, despite the fact that political and economic conditions in recent years have reduced the intensity of production. There is also the problem of art publications. The lack of local publications to publish art studies means a sense of isolation experienced by Sudanese artists. But despite these cramping conditions, Sudanese artists are still producing great art.
Mohamed Abdulrahman Hassan Art Critic
