Etel Adnan

Etel Adnan (Lebanon, 1925–France, 2021) was a writer and artist. She began painting in the 1960s and developed a practice that combined the visual arts with poetry, rooted in Arab-American culture.

Her paintings are characterized by compositions of intense fields of color, geometric shapes, and pure colors, with references to Nicolas de Staël and Paul Klee. During her time in California, she repeatedly depicted Mount Tamalpais as an unchanging symbol. In her later work, she recreated landscapes from memory using forms that suggest the sun, the sea, and the sand.

She has exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Zentrum Paul Klee, and the Institut du Monde Arabe. She has also participated in Documenta 13, the Sharjah Biennial, and the Whitney Biennial. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate in London, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.