Etel Adnan

Etel Adnan's career spanned several decades and encompassed a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, tapestry, film, and ceramics.

Biography of Etel Adnan

Etel Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1925. Throughout her life, she lived, studied, and worked in various locations including France and California. Adnan's education was extensive, having attended Paris-Sorbonne University, the University of California in Berkeley, and Harvard University.

In 2012, Adnan's work was featured in Documenta (13) in Germany, marking a significant point in her career. Following this, numerous prestigious museums presented solo exhibitions of her work. These included the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2021), Pera Museum in Istanbul (2021), Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (2019), Aspen Museum of Art (2019), SFMoMA (2018), Zentrum Paul Klee in Switzerland (2018), and MASS MoCA (2018). She also exhibited at Institut du Monde Arabe in France (2017), the Serpentine Gallery in England (2016), Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Switzerland (2016), Irish Museum of Modern Art (2015), Museum der Moderne Salzburg in Austria (2014-2015), and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar (2014).

Etel Adnan passed away in Paris, France, in 2021.

Etel Adnan's Art Style

Adnan initially gained recognition as a poet and prose writer, frequently using her work to address and protest the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the Lebanese Civil War. Her writing, and later her artwork, were deeply influenced by the landscape, its history, and her emotional and physical reactions to it. For Adnan, landscapes are intertwined with memories, particularly feelings of displacement, as she was born and raised in Lebanon but spent much of her life living, studying, and working in France and California.

Her earliest abstract works were created by using a palette knife to apply oil paint directly from the tube onto the canvas, making firm swipes across the surface. These compositions often featured a red square as their focal point.

In the 1960s, she began incorporating Arabic calligraphy into her artworks and books. Her art was significantly influenced by early hurufiyya artists such as Iraqi artist Jawad Salim, Palestinian writer and artist Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, and Iraqi painter Shakir Hassan al Said. Drawing inspiration from Japanese leporellos, Adnan also painted landscapes on foldable screens.