Chelsea, New York
Etel Adnan
On Paper (1960–2021)
Lelong & CoGalerie Lelong & Co., New York, is pleased to present Etel Adnan: On Paper, 1960–2021, a survey of works on paper by the late artist and writer. This exhibition is the first in the United States to show Adnan's works on paper in depth, including compositions in ink, pencil, pastel, and watercolor, and a selection of leporello artist books. These represent nearly six decades of Adnan's creative output until her death in 2021. The works on view showcase her distinctive use of gesture and perception across mediums, drawing inspiration from a range of artistic genres such as landscape, still life, and abstraction. This exhibition is held in commemoration of the one-hundredth anniversary of the artist's birth, and in conjunction with Etel Adnan: In the Rhythms of the World, a seminar celebrating Adnan's writing organized by Omar Berrada and Simone Fattal and jointly hosted by the Poetry Project and Giorno Poetry Systems, New York. Many of the drawings on view are informed by Adnan's experience of displacement and invoke the nostalgia of memory, echoing the vibrant painted landscapes for which Adnan is best known. A selection of works depicts landscapes that would have been familiar to the artist throughout her life in California and France, between which she lived and worked after leaving her native Lebanon. Often, Adnan returns to the same scene, altering its presentation through subtle changes in material and tone. Among the locales that recur in the works on view are Mount Tamalpais, the northern California mountain that served as a well of inspiration for Adnan, both in paintings and drawings throughout her oeuvre and as the subject of one of her best-known prose essays, Journey to Mount Tamalpais (1986). In Tamalpaïs (1986), Adnan depicts the subject entirely in watercolor, using differing shades to denote the qualities of the landscape. Two years later, Adnan depicts the same scene in Tamalpaïs, Sausalito (1988), now combining watercolor with bold strokes of ink. These two compositions, juxtaposed, highlight how Adnan's personal observation and recollection of the landscape is rendered through light and color. Etel Adnan's career spanned six decades and encompassed a wide range of media—including painting, drawing, tapestry, film, ceramics, and leporello artist books—as it did traditions and locations. Adnan was first an author of poetry and prose, often addressing and protesting the turmoil of war and colonialism. Informing her writing and later her artwork as well, was the landscape, its own history, and her emotional and physical response to it. For Adnan, the landscape is mingled with memory, especially a sentiment of displacement, as she was born and raised in Lebanon but lived, studied, and worked in France and California throughout her life. The Guggenheim Museum, New York, hosted Adnan's most recent solo exhibition at a US-based institution, Light's New Measure (2021). Numerous other museums have presented solo exhibitions of the artist's work, including the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany (2023); Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2022); Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey (2021); Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City (2019); Aspen Museum of Art, Aspen, Colorado (2019); SFMoMA, California (2018); Zentrum Paul Klee, Switzerland (2018); MASS MoCA, Massachusetts (2018); Institute du Monde Arabe, France (2017); the Serpentine Gallery, England (2016); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Switzerland (2016); Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland (2015); Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria (2014-2015); and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar (2014). In 2012, Adnan was included in Documenta (13) in Germany. Adnan's work is included in major public collections such as the British Museum, England; Centre Pompidou, France; Institut du Monde Arabe, France; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; M+, Hong Kong, China; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Museum of Modern Art, Tunisia; Tate, London, England; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Numerous books of Adnan's poetry and prose have been published internationally, with recent volumes including Je suis un volcan criblé de météores: Poésies 1947-1997 (2023) and Shifting the Silence (2020). Her latest collection of essays, Voyage, War, Exile will be published by Litmus Press in 2025. Adnan's most recent catalogue, Etel Adnan: Erquy, was published in 2024 by Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris. Adnan was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1925. She died in Paris, France in 2021.