
For this exhibition, Etel Adnan has produced a dozen dense and lively small round paintings, with a particularly supple and ample feel, focused on a single subject: flowers. When asked why she had chosen this topic, her answer was: ‘it came to me like that.’ The shape of these round flowers easily fits into the circular format of the works–a circle within a circle. To complete this group of tondi, she has added some rectangular paintings in just two colours, rather like painted drawings.
To accompany the exhibition, Galerie Lelong & Co. is publishing a short book that pairs the paintings with a choice of poems taken from the Cycle des tilleuls (2012).
The pictorial work of Etel Adnan has been exhibited in a variety of museums and arts centres around the world this year (Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern; Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade; Fondation Michalski, Montricher; Villa Médicis, Rome; MassMOCA, Massachussetts; Fondation van Gogh, Arles; Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakech…) and until 6th January 2019 is the focus of a retrospective at the MoMA in San Francisco.
An important monography on her work has just been published by Lund Humphries.
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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