North of the North Wind

‘There is a definitive analogy between my work as a painter and my work ‎as a filmmaker, which I think is inevitable. My framing of the film is ‎painterly. When it is in black and white the form of the frame becomes ‎even more important. My attitude to colour on film is also painterly…this is the way I do things‎. ‎I am a painter. Each work of art is different. I paint essentially for ‎myself. I see myself essentially as a painter, but I also come to life as a ‎filmmaker’- Hussein Shariffe

A pioneer of Sudanese modernism and an affiliate of the Khartoum School, Hussein Shariffe was an acclaimed poet, painter and filmmaker whose expansive body of work crosses both European and African circles. The Khartoum School was an artistic movement that developed in 1960 formed by the painters Ahmed Shibrain, Kamala Ishagqand Ibrahim El-Salahi. Seeking to incorporate modern abstraction with traditional Sudanese and traditional forms, their work spanned a larger transnational collective of artists and writers from the 1950s to 1970s involved in de-colonisation projects, such as Nasser’s Pan-Arabism. North of the North Wind is a rare painting which was exhibited at the iconic Gallery One, London in 1960. Just recently Shariffe’s work was shown at Sharjah Art Foundation’s ‘The Khartoum School – The Making of the Modern Art Movement in Sudan (1945-present).’

Educated at Victoria College in Alexandria, Shariffe then went to study modern history at the University of Cambridge. While there, he befriended journalists Nicholas Harman, Richard Kershaw and Jonathan Miller, the ‎famous theatre and opera director and producer. Moving to the Slade School of Fine Art, Shariffe studied under Lucien Freud. Shariffe later won the John Moores prize for young artists in 1958, his first solo exhibition in 1959 was at Victor Musgrave's Gallery One, London followed by a second solo there in 1960, at which the present work was shown. Musgrave was an important figure in the local art scene and was one of the first gallery owners in London to exhibit works by Arab and South Asian artists.

‎Following this 1960 exhibition, Shariffe returned to Sudan and worked as a lecturer at the School of Fine Arts in Khartoum 1964-66. In 1965 he founded the literary and arts periodical Twenty One, and turned to filmmaking in the 1970s, focusing on films about exile and Sudanese culture. In 1972, Ibrahim El-Salahi advised Shariffe to become Head of Film for the Sudanese Department of Culture. Finding in cinema the ability to communicate across cultures and social classes, Shariffe went on to produce noteworthy films including ‘Tigers are Better Looking,’ ‘Diary in Exile’ produced with Egyptian filmmaker Attiyat Al Abanodi, and ‘Letters from Abroad’ inspired by Sudanese poems.