Salah Elmur
Untitled (Seated Figure)
About the SessionNAIROBI – Following their successful collaboration in 2025, Strauss & Co, Africa’s leading auction house, and Danda Jaroljmek, Director of Art Auction East Africa, will present Art Auction East Africa | Strauss & Co, a 67-lot sale bringing together modern and contemporary art from East Africa and the wider continent. The live-virtual sale will be held at Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi on Wednesday, 28 October, 2026, 7pm EAT. The catalogue spans a diversity of East African countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda, alongside works by artists from Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Nigeria. Works on paper, photography and sculpture complements the strong painting consignment. “The selection invites collectors to discover East Africa’s diverse modernist histories, particularly those beyond the Anglophone world,” says Susie Goodman. “In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in East African modernists, with artists associated with the Khartoum School shown in museums and fairs globally. Our work as an auction house rooted in Africa is ensuring this rediscovery is not temporary. We are delighted to partner with Danda Jaroljmek in cultivating a sustainable secondary market for East African modernists active during the era of decolonisation and independence.” A preview exhibition will be held at Circle Art Gallery, Victoria Square, Riara Road, Nairobi, during the two weeks preceding the auction on Wednesday, 28 October 2026.
LOT 33
Salah Elmur
Untitled (Seated Figure)
About this Item
signed and dated
Provenance
Private Collection.
Notes
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 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.
Biography courtesy of Circle Art Gallery.
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