In 1946, he received a scholarship and moved to England to join Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London and finished his studied in 1949.
He thus became one of the first artists to free Arab calligraphy from its historical relationship with the sacred Islamic texts and to propose it as a veritable resource for Modernist art.
In 1967, he moved back to London and worked as a consultant calligrapher for the firm of banknote makers De La Rue.
By this, he was one of the first artists of the 20th century to explore modern forms of Arabic calligraphy,[8] integrating African cultural and Islamic visual traditions into contemporary Sudanese compositions.
[12] The same year, he also participated in a group exhibition at the Barbican Centre's The Curve Gallery, called Signs, Traces and Calligraphy, curated by Rose Issa.