
Between 2014 and 2021, Etel Adnan produced no fewer than 71 engravings, all published by GalerieLelong & Co. All her favourite themes are represented here: from the Matissian-outlined fruit stands,the now famous Mount Tamalpais that she celebrated all her life, to the inkwells and colour pots thatare the subject of many of her leporellos, and the last group of paintings Discovery of Immediacy, to theabstract landscapes in soft colours that are the heart of her painted work, to the compositions of a freeand sensitive geometry. In short – the whole range of subjects that Adnan explored in her late work issummarised here. Finally, for several of her poems published by Galerie Lelong, Adnan produced a smallengraving to accompany the first edition in a slipcase: L’Apocalypse arabe, L’Express Beyrouth-Enfer, Jesuis un volcan and Fil du temps,
Adnan took pleasure in creating watercolour versions in her own hand of some of her black and whiteengravings. In a luminous little text, the artist explains the pleasure she took in this work in collaborationwith a master printer, who temporarily relieved her from the solitude of painting. In so doing, she alsodeclares a commitment to an approach to art that reaches a wider audience than the necessarily narrowone of paintings.
To coincide with this exhibition, Galerie Lelong is publishing a complete catalogue of Etel Adnan’sengravings.
Etel Adnan was born on February 24, 1925 in Beirut. Lebanese American artist and writer, she presently lives and works in Paris. Since the 1960s, Etel Adnan has been making accordion-fold books, or leporellos, that meld visual and verbal observation, fusing the artist’s parallel practices in painting and writing as she transcribes poems and records unfolding landscapes and urban spaces.



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