North of the North Wind
by Hussein Shariffe (b. 1934, Omdurman, Sudan, d. 2005, Cairo)
A pioneer of Sudanese modernism, Hussein Shariffe was an acclaimed poet, painter and filmmaker. He was associated with the Khartoum School, an art movement formed in 1960 by the painters Ahmed Shibrain, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag and Ibrahim El-Salahi. Educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Shariffe later studied modern history at the University of Cambridge and a master’s at London’s Slade School of Fine Art, where he trained under Lucian Freud and won a John Moores Prize for young artists. His first solo exhibition was in 1959 at Victor Musgrave’s iconic Gallery One, one of the first galleries in London to present works by Arab and South Asian artists. A second show followed in 1960 including this work, an oil painting on canvas. Following this exhibition, he returned to Sudan and taught at the School of Fine Arts in Khartoum and founded the literary and arts periodical Twenty One. In the 1970s he turned to filmmaking, producing some noteworthy titles focused on exile and Sudanese culture. North of the North Wind was acquired by the Barjeel Art Foundation in November 2020 and is now on display at Sharjah Art Museum. —Peter Drennan
Courtesy of Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah
