Etel Adnan, the Lebanese-American author, poet, and artist, died on November 14 in Paris at age 96.
Throughout her six-decade career as an artist, Adnan became known for her geometric abstract works incorporating vibrant or pastel palettes, as well as her accordion-like works on paper that fold out combinations of drawings, text, and color.
“She had exceptionally sharp insights that she was able to convey in beautiful words, so to-the-point,” curator Sara Tas said about working with the artist to prepare the exhibition, which engages with the work of the famous Dutch painter.
“There are so many memories of Etel, as we worked together for so many years,” curator Hans Ulrich Obrist told Artnet News.
It is our resurrection.” The curator frequently visited with the artist and Fattal, and remarked on how Adnan’s practice continued to evolve right up until the end of her life, including a recent shift from color to “poetic” works in black and white ink this past spring.
David Cleaton-Roberts, director of London’s Cristea Roberts Gallery, which staged a solo exhibition of Adan’s etchings in the gallery in 2019, also spoke to her continued development in her practice.
Adnan was born in 1925 in Beirut to a Syrian father and a Greek mother.
“Etel taught us how important memory is without nostalgia, and made physical in words and images the beauty rendered from the light and darkness of the 20th and 21st centuries,” gallerist Mary Sabbatino, who represented Adnan at Galerie Lelong and Co, told Artnet News, adding that the her loss is “irreparable.” Sabbatino recalled sharing meals with Adnan at her favorite pizzeria in Paris as among the highlights of her career.
Soon after this Adnan’s gifts began to be recognized globally.