Etel Adnan

Collection of the artist’s family, Lebanon
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1998

This work is in very good condition. Left work: There are some paper creases that run 6cm parallel to the owner edge of the composition. Right Work: There are fine lines of paper creases scattered throughout the lower quadrant of the paper work.
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Etel Adnan is one of the most influential living Arab-American writers working today. Her work has inspired generations of artists to express themselves even in the face of ridicule and danger. Adnan is not only a revered novelist, but she also is a celebrated poet and artist. During the conflict and turmoil in Lebanon in the 1970s, she used abstract art as a means for open poetic expression. In 1996, she reflected on her reasoning for turning towards non-objective painting, “Abstract art was the equivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words, but colors and lines. I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression.” Although Adnan did not turn away from the written word, she began to incorporate abstract painting in her oeuvre in order to reach deeper and achieve more intense emotional meaning within her work.

After publishing her novel Sitt Marie Rose (1977) that critiqued the treatment of women and xenophobia in Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War, she began to receive death threats and subsequently moved to California. There, she continued her writing and painting and began to be published by longtime creative partner and friend Simone Fattal. Fattal launched a small publisher called the Post-Apollo Press and encouraged Adnan’s artistic exploration into poetry and painting. In California, Adnan was inspired to use poetry in tandem with abstract paintings as a form of artistic discovery and as a political statement. She began to work with leporellos, accordion-like Japanese books which she would fill up with symbols, text and vibrant colors. Through the leporellos series, she was able to discover a new artistic language and expand her oeuvre to incorporate a wide variety of expressive forms. Andrée Sfeir-Semler, who has exhibited the artist’s work at her Beirut and Hamburg galleries, discussed the emotive force behind Adnan’s work, commenting, “the leporellos are understated, quiet, but so powerful when you unfold them. A bit like Etel.” In addition to her novels and poems, Adnan has gained much praise in recent years because of this quiet but impressive power behind her paintings.

The present works, Apollo 10 and Apollo 11, demonstrate Adnan’s inspiration from nature to explore abstraction through the use of color and light.  They reference the first publishing house Adnan worked with in California and therefore express a new freedom that she found when able to explore her artistry without restraints. This freedom let her explore one of the most important elements in all of her creative outlets–nature. In Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 she creates a landscape with fluidity of shape and line while harnessing the feeling of nature. There is an unforced spirit in both of these works that captures the spontaneity and subtle elegance of nature that has been a fruitful wellspring of inspiration for Adnan throughout her career.