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Etel Adnan

ETEL ADNAN

Etel Adnan: On Paper, 1960–2021 Galerie Lelong & Co. New York 13 February–5 April 2025 New York
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Press Release

Galerie 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, opening on Thursday, February 13, 2025. This is the fourth solo exhibition at the gallery by Adnan, who had her first solo exhibitions at Galerie Lelong & Co. in New York and Paris in 2015. 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 watercolour, 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.

The presentation begins in the 1960s, when Adnan worked primarily in an abstract, almost Symbolist manner. Several drawings depicting meetings of celestial bodies are made only with black ink on paper, as though while writing she felt a compulsion to make a drawing with her fountain pen. In a suite of drawings entitled O Moon (c. 1960s), she presents a poem on six sheets of paper, the lines of verse illustrated with ink sketches in the shapes of moons and boats. In select contemporaneous works, ink lines that evoke static shapes and figures are interspersed in fields of soft watercolour, gouache, and pastel, while in others the feeling is decidedly expressive, with the drawings acquiring a more frenetic, joyful energy. Across these early works, Adnan’s burgeoning interest in both colour and the natural world takes hold.

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About the Artist

Etel Adnan’s career spans several decades and encompasses a wide range of media —including painting, drawing, tapestry, film, ceramics, and leporello artist books — as it does traditions and locations. Adnan was first an author of poetry and prose, often addressing and protesting against the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the Lebanese Civil War. 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 has lived, studied, and worked in France and California throughout her life.

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Also Exhibiting at Galerie Lelong & Co. New York

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Yoko Ono
YOKO ONO Music of the Mind Galerie Lelong & Co. New York 23 May–11 October 2026 New York
About the Gallery

Galerie Lelong & Co. represents prominent contemporary artists and estates from the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. This uniquely diverse group includes mid-career and established artists at the forefront of the international art world working across all media.

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Address
528 West 26th Street
New York
United States
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Saturday
10am – 6pm
(1)
New York 528 West 26th Street
Galerie Lelong Co. New York contemporary art gallery in New York United States
Galerie Lelong & Co. New York
528 West 26th Street, New York, United States
+1 212 315 0470
http://www.galerielelong.com

Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday
10am – 6pm
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